Charges
by LiiGHTS
Summary: Castiel had another charge before Dean; one that set everything in motion and pushed Castiel towards Dean. No pairings.
1. Chapter 1

Charges

_Castiel had another charge before Dean,_

_One that set everything in motion and_

_Pushed Castiel towards Dean._

_**Spoilers**__: General spoilers for episodes up to the first episode of season two (not only in this chapter, for all of it).  
__**Disclaimer**__: I don't own anyone you recognize from the show. I also don't own Mike and Kate Guenther. If you don't know who they are; they really are neighbors of John and Mary Winchester. John writes about them in the journal that serves as Dean and Sam's reference guide for fighting demons. The only people that I threw in here is Aaron and Julie Novak (Jimmy's parents); and that is only because Jimmy would be around the same age as Dean at the time most of this takes place, so he'd be a little too young to be Castiel's vessel. And since his parents are never mentioned in the show I just grabbed names out of thin air xD  
__**Important Notes**__: Jimmy's father, who I just randomly named Aaron, will look just like Misha Collins but with green eyes instead of blue. And anything in italics that isn't in a paragraph is Castiel speaking to Aaron._

_Each chapter will span the time of five days; though they might not be consecutive days until John starts hunting. Because of this some chapters might end up being way longer then some of the others while others could be way shorter, sorry in advance for the short chapters v.v For the most part, it will be following the time line set up in the actually show, it will just follow John and Castiel instead of Dean and Sam. But don't fret, Dean and Sam will make their own appearances in the story randomly throughout each chapter. Often times it'll be at least once a chapter, sometimes once a day ^^ It will tell you in the character section who is actually making an appearance in that chapter. So the character section will change each time the story is updated!_

_I'd also like to say sorry, 'cause it does kind of start out rather slow, but I do hope you like it ^^ And please leave some feedback if you have the time; they keep me writing more ( and often times I will crank out a chapter faster if I know someone actually enjoys reading this xD )_

_One last thing and then I promise the story will happen (unless you skipped this part then it's already happening): This chapter is currently yet to be beta read, so sorry for any mistakes or oocness..._

Chapter One

**October 27, 1983**

Aaron Novak had always thought of himself as a religious man. Ever since he was old enough to drive himself he made sure to go to church every Sunday and went to every church social he could manage to squeeze into his schedule. He met his wife, Julie, through church. Two years after they married, they had their first and only child. A boy they named Jimmy.

Julie had left with Jimmy to go to the store a few minutes ago to get more Halloween candy as well as regular groceries; assuring him they'd be back in an hour, even though he knew they'd take at least three. He was home doing some work for his next big job, the television playing in the background to keep him company, but the volume was down low so he wouldn't get distracted from the assignment he was now typing up.

The static of the television caused him to look up and stare at the black, white, and gray screen. Aaron let out a faint groan as he stretched his arms over his head, his shoulders popping after staying in one position for a long time. He stood up and walked into the living room, grabbing the remote from off the coffee table and hitting the power button. He glared at the screen when nothing happened and mashed the button a few more times, with the same result. With another groan he placed it onto the table top and walked around it to push the power button on the TV. Before his finger could actually push the button the static of the screen went off, turning the TV back to its previous channel for a second then turning it to a channel with a male preacher on a stage then it was back to static.

A loud screech erupted from what Aaron thought was the television, bringing the man to his knees to clutch at his ears. He screamed out in pain as the glass from the table and windows broke around him. He was still screaming when it stopped, leaving him in silence. Aaron raised his head a fraction of an inch and glanced around the room until his gaze landed on the TV, which was now turned to the channel he had had it on before it went to static the first time. Aaron stood from his spot on the floor with a dazed and confused expression plastered to his face. He walked back over to the chair he had been sitting in and collapsed down into it, but couldn't get back to work.

**October 31, 1983**

Jimmy had fallen asleep earlier than usual that night; spent after going trick-or-treating all around the neighborhood with Julie. Julie had fallen asleep shortly after the boy, leaving Aaron alone in the living room to finish up the same report he had been working on for a few days now. He had hit a slump in his writing after last Thursday. He still wasn't sure what had happened with the TV, the company had no other records of it emitting an ear piercing screech. Julie had shrugged it off as a one time thing and helped him clean up the mess in the living room the incident had caused. Aaron had mostly forgotten about it, until he forced himself to get back to his paper and made him remember that the television had been the cause of his report taking him too long. Currently, it was keeping him from going out with his son and wife to scout out the neighborhood for Halloween candy.

Aaron stood up from his position at the kitchen table and walked over to the sink to place his hands on the cool marble of the counter and look out the window to see all the kids running around in their crazy costumes. Julie had made sure to leave the porch light off so he wouldn't be interrupted by the children, but he now didn't see the reason behind it since he couldn't focus at the moment.

The television in the living room flickered to life in the reflection of the kitchen window that he was watching, bringing him out of his daze. Aaron turned around, confused, and stared at the machine that seemed to be acting up a lot lately. It was on the static screen again, but no loud screech came this time. It stayed on static for a few minutes before flickering off again. Aaron waved it off and walked back over to the table and collapsed into the only pulled out seat. He was still watching the television screen when it came to life again, showing nothing more than static like before.

_Aaron?_

Aaron straightened himself in the seat and looked around the room, searching for any kind of explanation as to why he had just heard his name, but he came up empty. He raised his hands to rub at tired eyes, deciding that it must be the stress of the report sitting on the table in front of him that must be the cause of him hearing voices. There was really no other way to explain it.

_Aaron Novak._

"Fine, I'm going to bed." Aaron said out loud to himself and stood up to make his way to his and Julie's bedroom, but a more forceful voice this time kept him frozen in his step.

_Aaron, I am not a delusion your mind made up. I am Castiel, an angel of the Lord._

"Well, _Castiel_, that whole angel of the Lord thing, not really working in your favor." Aaron said, and shook his head. He continued his journey to his bedroom, leaving his report downstairs in favor of just getting a good night rest. Something he desperately needed at this point.

_You believe in God, do you not?_

"Of course I believe in-"Aaron stopped himself mid-sentence, "I can't believe I'm talking to myself!" He threw up his hands in disbelief and continued his climb up the stairs.

_If I must, I will prove it to you._

Aaron paused in his stride and looked up to the ceiling of his home with a very annoyed expression. His mind was playing tricks on him, using his belief in the Lord as bait. It was beginning to become frustrating. "Could you leave me alone?" he asked the air, with hopes that it wouldn't actually answer him back this time.

_Go downstairs into the kitchen._

Aaron let out a very loud and annoyed sigh at how demanding this voice seemed to be, but turned around to face the bottom of the stairs nonetheless. "Fine, I'll play into this delusion just this once." He said, and began to trot back down the stairs so that he was standing in his living room once more then to the kitchen where this 'angel' told him to go expecting to see some minor miracle; like his report being finished for him, but nothing was out of the ordinary. "Alright, now what?" he asked the room.

_Turn on one of the burners on the stove._

Aaron wasn't liking where this was going, but did as he told and this time without the attitude. The voice, well Castiel, didn't say anything for a while. He was beginning to give up, turn the stove off, and head back up the stairs when the eye turned its brightest shade of red and the voice came back.

_Now put your hand on the burner._

"Excuse me?" Aaron shouted, holding his hands up in front of him and backed up away from the stove, "Alright, voice, that's where I'm drawing the line. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed."

_Touch it._

The tone had grown increasingly more demanding, and now even sounded angry. Aaron shifted his weight between his feet and stared at the burner in front of him. He let out a very shaky breath and reached forward, pausing an inch away from the red surface. He slowly moved it forward, but jerked it back when he was but a few millimeters away from actually letting his hand hit it.

_You will be fine, now touch it._

Aaron let out another shaky breath, but did as he was told and reached his hand out to touch the surface of the burner. He drew it back as soon as his finger hit the metal. He stared at his hand in slight disbelief when there was no redness and the spot that should have been burned didn't even feel as if it had even touched the hot surface. He shifted his weight between his feet again and with slightly less coaxing on his part, reached out to press his hand flat against the burner. Again, nothing. It didn't even feel hot. "Ok, what just happened?" he asked, but this time there was no answer from the voice of Castiel.

**November 1, 1983**

One day passed before Aaron heard anything from the angel. All morning he had chalked it up to his wild imagination; that maybe he had only dreamed the entire thing up after the stress of the report. He hadn't bothered to tell Julie about it, this time he was sure it was only a one time thing and he'd never hear from this Castiel again. But there he was. Standing alone in his bathroom and talking to himself once more like a lunatic.

_I need your help._

Aaron gazed at his reflection in the mirror; sure he'd see some sign of himself going crazy if he stared at it long enough. He wasn't actually sure what those signs would be if he could even see them, but he was sure talking to himself in an empty bathroom qualified as one. The voice in his head insisting that he was sane was really only making it worse. Isn't that what their expose to say? "With what?" he finally asked, indulging in his delusion for the second time that week.

_Your bloodline allows me to walk the Earth, with you as my vessel._

"So, you want to take over my body so that you can run around down here with the humans?" Aaron asked, a small hint of disbelief finding its way into his voice.

_No. I have a duty I must perform and I need you as my vessel to do it._

Aaron shook his head at his reflection and bent over. He turned the sink on and cupped his hands together under the stream until it puddle in his hands. He splashed his face with the cool liquid before looking back up into the mirror. "And if I say yes?" he turned the knob on the faucet until the water turned off and placed his hands on either side of the sink.

_Then you will be greatly rewarded._

That was it? No explanation? Aaron inwardly groaned as he let himself continue to actually think this over. "And what about my family?" he asked, "Will they be safe?"

_Yes._

Aaron straightened himself up and grabbed the towel of the ring on the side of the wall to dry of his face. "Alright then, I'll do it." He said, still not one hundred percent sure he wasn't imagining this entire conversation. A second later disproved that thought. A bright yellow light surrounded him and just as quickly it was gone. The towel was dropped out of his hand, onto the bathroom floor, and a second later he wasn't there.

The man, who was now Castiel, was standing in front of a house in Lawrence, Kansas. The home of his newest charge: John Eric Winchester.

**November 2, 1983**

John Winchester had never liked Wednesday's. It never failed that this day would force him to stay at the shop later than usual, working beside Mike on cars they had worked on countless times before. The only difference between today and every other Wednesday was that he had to stay there an hour over what he normally had to. Not that it bothered him. Extra work meant extra pay. The only true problem with staying past his scheduled hours was that it usually caused an argument between Mary and him. She had been getting on to him lately about how much time he spent at the shop; spending extra time there fixing cars instead of spending that time at home with their six year old son, Dean, and their six month old son, Sammy.

The argument was always the same for the both of them. She'd shout about him not spending enough time with the boys and he'd shout about how much a new mouth to feed was costing them. That night was no different than the rest. Mary waited until she was sure the boys were asleep in their separate rooms then brought up the conversation that John knew was coming as soon as he stepped foot into the house. They fought in hushed voices until it got to the point that John opted to watch some TV instead of heading up to bed with Mary. He didn't know the name of whatever movie was on the television, the beer he was nursing in his right hand keeping his attention more than whatever scene was playing out on the screen.

It was around ten o'clock that night when he finally drifted off to sleep with the beer still in his hand. A scream erupting from upstairs forced him out of his slumber. He jumped up from his seat, letting the bottle fall to the floor.

"Mary!" he shouted as he ran to the stairs of the house, not even bothering to pause to wait for an answer. He called his wife's name out twice more as he bolted up the stairs, but no answer came. John went straight for Sam's room and slammed the door open when he got there; a flood of relief coming over him when he realized that his son was safe. He walked over to the crib and smiled down at the tiny boy, "Hey Sammy." His face contorted into confusion when his gaze landed on a spot of red in the crib beside Sam. He reached down and dabbed at it with his finger, some more drops hitting the top of his hand in the process. He tilts his head up to the ceiling, eyes widening in surprise when he spots Mary resting against the ceiling as if there was no gravity that was supposed to be holding her to the Earth.

However, none of that mattered to him at that moment. His wife suspended in the air against the ceiling of the nursery wasn't his problem. Mary was the cause of the blood that was dripping into the crib next to Sammy; her stomach had been stabbed with, what he assumed was, a knife. "No! Mary!" he shouted and tried to reach up to her and get her down, but as soon as his arms stretched up the entire ceiling burst into flames. Sammy's crying breaks him out of his surprised trance and he turns to face the crib once more. He wrapped his arms around Sam and ran out of the room to find Dean running out of his own room.

"Daddy!" Dean shouts as he runs towards John.

John bends down and hands the baby to Dean. "Take your brother outside as fast as you can! Now Dean, go!" John orders and turns back to the room where Mary is still. He makes it to the door when the entire room is engulfed by the flames. "Mary! No!" His body begins to seemingly move on its own as he runs down back down the hall and down the stairs to the front door, leaving Mary in the room where; already knowing that she couldn't have survived the blast. He's out the door in a matter of seconds and across the yard where Dean is standing with Sam in his arms, staring up at the window of the nursery. "I gotcha." John is still running as he grabs them both and continues running until he's across the street to Mike and Kate's house.

Mike is already at the front door, holding it open for him and the boys. He ushers them in as he stares openly at the house across the street. "Kate's calling the fire department now John." Mike says as he shuts the door behind them and takes the boys from John's arms and forces them to go into the kitchen where Kate is standing; she's shouting at the people on the other end, telling them to hurry.

John doesn't see how it helped any. It's almost twenty minutes until the fire trucks get there with an ambulance and cop cars in tow. John is sitting on the couch in the living room, wringing out his hands as he stares vacantly at the floor. He looks up briefly when Kate enters the room and seats herself next to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "They're gonna want to talk to you, John." She says and he gives a small nod of his head before standing up and walking out of the house with her close behind him. The fires out by now, but the house is gone. John stopped caring when he realized Mary wasn't going to be walking out alive. If she did; it would be one hell of a miracle.

John realizes his worst fears were correct when one of the firemen, who John supposes must be either chief or the lieutenant, walks over to him with a sorrowful expression on his face. He only half heartedly listens as the man tells him his wife is dead. He appreciates the fact that Kate's there, with her arm tightly wrapped around his upper back and her right hand gripping painfully at his arm; he doubts he would have stayed in the present if it wasn't for her standing next to him.

"Can you tell us what happened?" The man asked John; forcing him to try and keep track of the conversation, but his mind was elsewhere.

"I was asleep, in the living room, when I heard Mary scream." John paused to think back on what had happened next, "I jumped up and ran up the stairs into the nursery where Sammy sleeps."

John pauses again, this time to actually wonder if what he saw was even real. Mary couldn't have been on the ceiling. There wasn't any plausible way for her to be in the air when he walked into the room; but if she hadn't been there, then when'd she get into the room and where had the blood in Sammy's crib come from?

John glanced to where the fireman was standing, waiting for him to continue telling the events of the night. He wasn't sure what to tell the man. If he told Kate and this guy the truth then they'd both think him nuts. "I… checked on Sammy, he was awake but alright. Mary was… she was in the corner of the room, I hadn't seen her when I walked in." he stopped and rubbed at his face with his hands, "I don't know what happened next: all I know is that there was a fire and I grabbed Sam, ran out the room, gave him to Dean, and told him to take his brother outside."

Kate was rubbing at his arm now, urging him to continue and get it all done with now so he wouldn't have to do it later. He didn't know how she thought it would help him; he'd still relive it in his mind and in his nightmares. "I went back to the room, but it was already in flames when I got there. So I ran out, grabbed my kids, and went to Mike's house where Kate was already calling you guys." The fireman was nodding, taking down every word that came out of John's mouth for the report and if they had any more questions for him later.

John turned his attention to the house that was really now only half of a house. He didn't bother listening to the rest of what the guy had to say, he was sure that if he asked a question then Kate would answer for him and if she didn't know the answer then she'd nudge him and rephrase what had been asked of him. Instead he was watching the crowd that was forming in front of his home; his gaze landed on one person in particular. Shocking green eyes were watching him, almost curiously. It made John angry; that this man, who he had never seen before in his life, was standing in front of his home and was watching him. He forced himself to look away from the man in the suit and stare back at his home.

No nudge ever came until the man left the two of them alone and Kate was trying to turn him around to go back to the house where Sam and Dean were waiting for him. "John, you and the boys can stay with us tonight." Kate was saying as they both walked across the street and lawn to the stairs of her home. He doubted it was optional, but he was glad for the offer all the same. John only gave her a nod, to show he had been listening, and walked into the house with her; heading straight for the living room to seat himself on the couch. Looking around he didn't find the boys, but Mike assured him they were sleeping soundly in the guest room. John didn't move as Kate scurried around between the rooms, grabbing blankets and pillows for John so he could sleep comfortably on the couch.

John found he couldn't sleep that night, not even after being coaxed down to a laying position on the couch. The warmth of the blanket that was placed over him by a very gentle Kate was nothing compared to the warmth of Mary's body. Why he had refused to sleep in the bed with her that night; he couldn't remember anymore. Everything before Mary screamed had become one giant blur in his mind. After that, he could recall everything in vivid detail, but most of it didn't make sense. Mary couldn't have been on the ceiling; John knew that. And how had she been hurt?

It took him a long time, but John eventually drifted off: this happened somewhere between arguing with himself over if Mary had actually been up there or not and whether or not the fire had someone managed to jump out at him to keep him from getting to her.

**November 6, 1983**

John felt more than a little uncomfortable sitting in a pew in a black suit, wringing his hands as they rested in his lap. Dean was sitting still and quiet to his left while baby Sammy was asleep in his baby carrier with his blanket half falling out after he had kicked it away in an attempt to stay a little cooler. Every now and then John would let his hands rub down the fabric of his pants to rest at his knees as he looked around the room half expecting Mary to walk through the doors of the church to come sit with him, but then he would remember that the reason they were here was because of her. Her funeral. A closed casket funeral. Nothing had been left of his wife the night of the fire; not even her teeth. John didn't see the point in this; holding a funeral for an empty casket, but Mike and KateGuenther said it would help him grieve and get over his wife's passing. In the beginning he argued with them, yelling that there was no point in having a funeral if there wasn't a body, but he eventually agreed when they said it might help the boys get over it. He could only guess how it made Dean feel. John wasn't even sure if Dean really grasped what was going on. He could ask, but all the questions he had asked the boy so far were answered with even more silence so he had eventually stopped asking all together.

With each new person that filed past to shake his hand before sitting, the uncomfortable feeling grew. John stole a glance to where Dean and Sammy were sitting; Sam was still conked out and Dean looked slightly frustrated at all the attention he was getting from people he barely knew or didn't know at all. His gaze was glued to his younger brother, even when people stopped to pat him on the head or shoulder.

John chanced another gaze back at the door, a look of disappointment washing over him when the door opened to reveal yet one more person that he wasn't entirely sure when Mary could have run into them. A hand on his shoulder, from behind this time, startled him for only a moment. He glanced in the pew behind him, where Mike and Kate were sitting, revealing that the hand on his shoulder belonged to Kate. He tried to give them a reassuring smile, tell them that he was ok without using words, but he wasn't even sure his lips had twitched, let alone form an actual smile. He readjusted himself to sit straight, staring vacantly at the empty coffin to his left.

When the pastor of the church walked in John didn't bother looking at him or even to try and pay attention; he only kept his eyes on the empty coffin and reached his hand over to rest on Dean's knee. The rest of the service went smoothly; at least, as far as John knew, halfway through he zoned out. Dean squeezing his hand brought him back, but by then it was all over. John stood up from his seat and grabbed the handle on Sammy's carrier. Mike had walked to the end of his own pew, with Kate right behind him, and stopped to wait. Wait for him he supposed, but that didn't make John speed up any. When he did finally get to where the two were standing Kate wrapped her hand around his arm and walked with him out of the church.

"You and the boys should stay with us as long as you need to. No sense in the three of you being held up in some apartment." She said in that no nonsense way of hers, letting John know that he didn't really have a choice in the matter. If he wanted to live alone for a while, with his boys, then he'd have to fight a losing battle for the chance. It was a good thing he didn't want to be left alone, with nothing but his thoughts since Sammy had always been an unusually quiet baby and now Dean refused to say anything, to anyone.

"I, uh, have to go to the store." John said, giving a reluctant nod to the woman. They needed new clothes, baby supplies, and basically everything else. The house had gone up in smokes, leaving them with nothing. Kate gave a small nod, not bothering to tell him that he could always do it tomorrow. He doubted he would have paid attention to the suggestion and he definitely wouldn't have done it.

"Ok, we'll take the boys home." Kate took the carrier out of John's hand and put it into her and Mike's car, fastened it and baby Sammy into place, then helped Dean climb into the car and buckle himself up. John nodded, waved goodbye to his two children, and climbed into his Chevy Impala. He dug his keys out of his pocket and jammed it into the keyhole, turning it away from him so that the engine roared to life. He backed out of the parking space, waved once more to Kate and Mike, and then drove off to the nearest store.

One hour walking around the store found John with very little in his cart. He wasn't sure what the boys would want. Mary was always better at keeping track of what the boys liked and what they didn't. He should have paid more attention, but his job as a mechanic getting in the way of his family time. He wished that he could have been there more, but he couldn't change the past now. All he could hope for is the chance to be closer to his boys now. Now that Mary was gone.

John paused in one of the aisles, his eyes glued to a book with a green-brown binding. He remembered countless nights where Mary would sit in bed and by the light of the table lamp scribble in these journals. He had asked her about it on several occasions, why she felt the need to write everything down in the journals. She had smiled and told him that it helped her remember the little things and him and the boys. He wished he could read those journals now, but they were gone now, like the house and everything else they had. John reached out and let his fingertips run across the binding of the journal. It only took him a moment longer to grab it and place it in the cart. That was all he bought: a few supplies, some clothes for everyone, and the journal.

The drive to Mike and Kate's house went by quick with one of the many tapes he had playing as background noise. When he arrived he took one step inside before the smell of food hit him in the face. He didn't want to eat anything. He should eat, but at that moment it only made him feel nauseous. John bypassed the kitchen and went straight for the make shift bed on the couch of the living room and threw the bags down beside the table. He didn't bother removing the clothes he had worn to the funeral; instead he kicked off his shoes and fell back onto the couch, draping an arm across his eyes to block off the light that caused his headache to multiply in pain.

John didn't move for the longest time, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't will himself to go to sleep. He could hear movement all around him; quiet footsteps of people trying not to disturb his sleep, since as far as they knew it was the best he had had since the night before the fire.

It was around eleven at night when John finally gave up on sleep; instead, going to find Dean and little Sammy. He walked as quietly as he could to the room down the hall from him and peaked inside. Dean's bed was vacant, had been for the entire time they had started staying there. He was curled up in the other bed with Sammy, protecting and watching over him. He stood there watching them both sleep for what seemed like an hour, but in reality was only twenty minutes before he turned around and walked back to the couch in the living room. He collapsed onto the seat and raised his hands to rub at his face.

John dropped them into his lap, his gaze roaming the room until they landed on the white shopping bag sitting a foot away from him. He reached out and grabbed it, dragging it closer to pear inside. It didn't take long for his eyes to land on the thing he was searching for; the journal he had bought at the store. He took it out and opened it up, flipping through the pages once before turning it back to the first one. He stared at the blank page until he got fed up with himself and tossed the book onto the other end of the couch.

He didn't know why he had even bothered to buy the book. He wasn't someone who wrote things down, never had been. Mary was. She always insisted on writing in her journals before she went to bed and she had wanted him to start, but he refused. John had never seen the point in it and he wasn't sure he would see it now.

He went back to what he was doing before, trying to fight himself into falling asleep. It wasn't working and every time he opened his eyes, his gaze drifted back to the journal at his feet. John let out a frustrated sigh before sitting back up and reaching over to grab the book that was almost mocking him. He opened it back up to the first page and stared at the page once again. This time he reached behind him to grab the pen that was always sitting on the table by the couch and actually began to write down all of the thoughts that were running through his head at the moment.

It wasn't much and it didn't make him feel any better afterwards, not that he expected it to, but he was able to fall asleep after the words were written down in the book instead of running through his head.


	2. Chapter 2

Summary: Castiel had another charge before Dean; one that set everything in motion and pushed Castiel towards Dean.  
Chapter Title: Nightmares  
Chapter Number: 2/?  
Word Count: 5,219 words / 10,757 total  
Rating: PG-13 for violence and language and character death : (  
Characters: John Winchester, Castiel, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Mike Guenther, and Kate Guenther.  
Pairing: None  
Spoilers: General spoilers for episodes up to the first episode of season two (not only in this chapter, for all of it).  
Disclaimer: I don't own anyone you recognize from the show. I also don't own Mike and Kate Guenther. If you don't know who they are; they really are neighbors of John and Mary Winchester. John writes about them in the journal that serves as Dean and Sam's reference guide for fighting demons.  
Important Note: Since this story is so easy to keep track of where I'm at since each chapter will always, or at least almost always, span the time of five days I'm going to try and keep you guys updated on where I'm at in writing the next chapter. I will the chapter and day that I am working on in my profile on here. All you have to do is look for the Charges summary in my stories section =]

Chapter Two

**November 13, 1983**

It's been eleven days since the fire. Eleven days since his wife was taken from him so abruptly. Eleven days. John has yet to sit down and let it all wash over him; to let it out and finally sit down and just cry. He feels like he should stay strong for the boys, but Kate keeps telling him they have her and Mike for that so he shouldn't worry about not showing any weakness in front of them. It did nothing to ease his mind: which is why he's now resting on the couch. He's not asleep, he's sure it's been twelve days since the last time he got a decent night's sleep. Each time he lets his mind go still long enough to sleep he was awoken a few hours later from the same dream.

A dream where Mary's on the ceiling of the nursery with blood dripping from her abdomen into the crib that little Sammy is still lying in. He makes to reach for her, but as soon as his hand comes out there's fire all around her. That's always when he jolts up off the couch. It takes him a while to remember that that's already happened and he's not standing in the nursery any more. He's not back at his home, but in Kate and Mike's living room with the boy's sleeping in a room down the hall.

Tonight was no different. He had awoken from the dream drenched in sweat. It had taken him two minutes to remember where he was before he fell back onto the couch and draped a hand over his eyes, his breathing slowly slipping back into its original rhythm instead of the labored gasps it had been. It had taken him all of ten seconds to decide there was no way he'd be going back to sleep that night. John's hand lifted for a moment so that he could glance across the room at the clock on the wall above the television: four in the morning. Still too early for him to even think about getting out of bed to wander around the house. He didn't want to accidentally wake up the boys.

John also didn't want to accidentally wake up Mike or Kate. He doubted he could take another heart to heart from Kate. He definitely couldn't take Mike trying to get him out of the house and back to the shop. It was the shop's fault he hadn't been sleeping in the same room as Mary that night. He wasn't sure if it would have helped anything to have him asleep in the same bed as Mary that night. She woke up for some reason and still would have even if he was there, but she might not have gotten out of bed if he had been there. Then what? Would Sammy be alright if it wasn't for Mary waking up that night?

John stood up from the couch in one fluid motion and walked down the hall to the boy's room as quietly as he could. He glanced to Dean's bed first, empty, then to Sammy's. Dean was lying in the bed with him, curled up around the small baby to protect him from things a four year old shouldn't have to worry about. Things that John should have been able to protect them from, all three of them. John stood in the doorway to the boys' room for only a moment longer before turning around and walking back into the living room. He didn't stop there. He walked to the door of the house and stepped out into the chilly night air.

John scolded himself for not thinking about bringing a jacket, but he couldn't bring himself to actually turn back around and go back inside to grab one. He shuffled down the stairs and to the middle of the yard, exactly where he had been standing when the firemen came over to give him news he had already expected. That he was a widower; Mary was gone and wouldn't be coming back. John folded his arms across his chest, gripping his sides painfully hard. His eyes were glued to the house across the street as he collapsed onto the ground and finally let the long overdue tears fall.

He wasn't sure how long he stayed there, in that position as everything washed over him. All John knew was that when he finally stopped crying the sun was slowly sneaking up into the morning sky. He stayed there for thirty more minutes; just staring at the half gone house he use to call a home. It wasn't until he heard the front door open behind him that he remembered where exactly he was.

"John, what are you doing?" Kate asked as she hurried towards him dressed in nothing but a white robe and her pajamas. "Get back inside! You don't want to catch a cold!" She rushed over to him and collapsed onto the ground next to him, her hands wrapping around his right arm.

"Nothing makes sense any more, Kate." John rubbed his hands roughly up his arms to try and get some heat back into them.

"Oh John, I know." Kate shifted forward and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug, "I know."

"I want her back." John said and before he knew it, the tears were back. He felt his head being pulled towards Kate and he went with the movement without fighting with his friend. It was another hour before he stopped again, by then he was sure Mike and at least Dean would be up and running around the house. Not running. Dean hardly ever did anything more than stumble across the carpet anymore and he barely did that. Usually he'd sit in front of the TV with some kids show on, but he only paid the show half the attention he would have if it was a normal day with Mary still alive.

**November 17, 1983**

John was leaning against a counter in the kitchen next to the fridge. Dean and Kate had already eaten and left the room; leaving him with Mike, who he suspected was trying to get up the courage to actually talk to him. Either that or was going over whatever he wanted to say in his head so he didn't make the mistake of saying the wrong thing to John. A task he doubted his friend would be able to do. Everything had begun to upset him lately. He was getting more and more irritated over little things with the passing of each day that Mary's case went unsolved. He could tell that Mike was getting frustrated with his attitude, but he had yet to say a thing to him. Until now. Mike was staring at him as he continued to chew on the eggs that Kate had made for all of them earlier. John hadn't bothered to try and eat them while Dean only picked at them.

"You wanna talk?" Mike asked when he finally finished the food on his plate and dropped his fork on the table beside his cup of coffee.

"No." John said abruptly. He shifted his weight to his left foot and folded his arms across his chest, his eyes glued to the floor. He could still feel Mike watching him; he could sense that the man was trying his hardest to be understanding, but he was barely reigning in his anger.

"Too bad." Mike grabbed the napkin from the table, where his fork had been sitting when he first started eating, and wiped at his mouth. He stood up from the table and walked his dishes over to the sink and placed them on top of the dishes that had already been placed there, Kate would get to them later. "You're talking." Mike turned around and leaned against the sink, facing John and standing in the exact same stance as the other male.

Neither of them spoke for the longest time. If it wasn't for the fact that Mike was still standing there watching him, John would have thought he had given up on getting him to talk. But he was still standing there, staring at him. He was waiting and John had a feeling he'd stand there waiting all day until he got something out of the man. John desperately wanted Mike to give up on him. The only thing he wanted to talk about was how Mary got on the ceiling that night and how the fire seemed to leap out at him to get him away from her. He couldn't bring that up with Mike; he'd think John mad. At the same time, John should talk to someone about it and he was pretty sure the only person that would even begin to understand him was standing a foot away waiting for him to open his mouth. John let out a short huff of breath and raised his hands to rub at his tired eyes. He walked over to the table, thinking it better to be sitting down for this particular conversation. Mike followed his lead, sitting down in the seat closest to him.

"Look, John, I'm really sorry about what happened. Her death; it wasn't your fault. It was probably faulty wiring." Mike, John guessed, was trying to ease his pain, but it didn't make him feel any better. It wasn't any different to think Mary's death was some freak accident or to think it was due to faulty wiring. She was still gone; he wasn't getting her back. How she died didn't matter to him at this point. He had other concerns; other worries. John placed his hands in his lap and began fiddling with his fingers.

"Mike, when I went into the nursery that night." John paused and raised his hand to run it through his much too long hair, "There was blood in Sammy's crib and when I looked up to see where it was coming from. Mike; Mary, she was on the ceiling." John looked up from staring at the floor to look at Mike. He didn't notice anything different in his expression or eyes. Mike was still just listening to him, but he was sure that Mike thought he was talking to sleep deprived and traumatized man.

"And when I went to get her down; the entire ceiling burst into flames." John continued telling his story, not bothering to stop and check if Mike wasn't mentally telling himself to get John checked into a facility. Right then, he just wanted it all to be said. Maybe then he could get the much needed sleep that everyone knew he was going without lately. "I grabbed Sammy out of the crib and gave him to Dean in the hallway. And when I tried to go back into the room; the flames, it was like the leapt out at me." John finished it there. He wasn't sure if Mike was even paying attention to him anymore.

It took Mike a long time to say anything. He just sat there in the kitchen with John in silence: to make sure John was done talking or to figure out what he was going to say, John wasn't sure. "How long has it been since the last time you had a good night's sleep?" Mike quietly asked. He had his eyes trained on John, as if he thought the man would crack at any moment.

John sighed. He already knew that this was how it was going to be. That's why he hadn't decided to tell the fireman that particular part of the story. "I don't know. Since a couple days before the fire, I guess." John said.

"Now, you listen to me John. You're gonna get through this, for the boys." Mike was saying, but John wasn't paying much attention any more. Mike had lost his chance to have John listen to him when he decided that John had left his sanity in the house with Mary when it all went up in flames. "Now, I need you to go get some sleep. It'll all make better sense when you wake up." John didn't count on it, but he didn't bother to argue his point with the mechanic. Instead, he stood up from the table and walked towards the living to try and get a few more hours of sleep. He wasn't sure if it had been him finally getting it all off his chest or that the sleep deprivation had finally gotten to him, but as soon as John's head hit the pillow lying on the couch, he was out.

John slept through lunch and almost through dinner, but Kate managed to coax him out of his slumber by the sweet smell of food that he hadn't been able to eat much of in a while. His stomach growled in appreciation when the smell of homemade lasagna blew past his nose. He groggily rolled off the couch and walked into the kitchen where everyone was just now sitting down for dinner. John stared at the food being set down on the table before sitting down in the empty chair; he had decided if it wasn't for the fact that Kate made such delicious meals, he probably wouldn't have been eating at all these past few days.

For the most part, everyone ate in silence. Only speaking when they needed something passed to them. John watched Dean as he slid his food around the plate, only occasionally lifting the fork to his mouth to take a bite. He needed to talk to Dean about that and get him to start eating regularly again; but before he opened his mouth to say something, Dean slid out of his chair and left the room to go find Sammy, who John supposed was fast asleep in his crib by now. Mike finished up behind Dean rather quickly, leaving Kate and John at the table alone. He was beginning to dislike these little meetings. He was sure that this meant it was Kate's turn to talk to him.

"John, I'm really sorry about what happened to Mary." Kate said quietly from her side of the table. John was already starting to hate those words. They had been saying it a lot lately. That or they tried to tell him that it her death was because of faulty wiring. It didn't mean anything to John; it wouldn't change his way of thinking. Not until Mary's case was closed would he start to let those words finally sink in. "I think that you should talk to someone about this." John inaudible huff at her trying to sugar coat saying that she thought he was crazy. He had already guessed that Mike would have talked to her about what they had said that morning after breakfast. He just hadn't thought she'd be the one to bring it back up. John definitely hadn't thought she'd suggest he go talk to a shrink about it.

John was glaring at the food in his plate, no longer eating any of it. He didn't need to talk to anyone about this. He hadn't talked to anyone about what he had gone through when he was in the Marines during Nam. John knew he could get through this alone; he just needed a little more time. It wasn't as if any amount of sleep or talking would change what he saw that night.

**November 26, 1983**

It had been twenty-four days since the fire. The police hadn't come up with anything new on her case and didn't even know if it was classified as a crime yet. John was sitting in a chair outside of the office of the head investigator on Mary's case, waiting for him to get done with whatever he was doing so that he could go in. The man had called him down to the police station that morning to ask him more questions about the second of November. John was hoping that it was also to tell him they had found out more about what had happened. As soon as the detective walked out of the room, John knew that that wasn't the case. His entire demeanor said he didn't have anything new to tell him about Mary.

"Come on in Mr. Winchester." Detective Marsters held the door open so that John could walk in the room in front of him. John seated himself in the right seat in front of the desk and waited for Marsters to say whatever it was he was going to say. "So, here's the thing Mr. Winchester. I called you here today to go over a few questions." The man said. He didn't wait for John to say anything before diving straight into the questions. "Where were you the night of the fire?" he asked.

John's head shot up as he narrowed his gaze at the detective. "I told you before. I was in the living room." He said, anger clear in his tone.

Marsters ignored his first comment in favor of continuing with the questions he needed to ask. "Why were you in the living room?" his gaze was trained on John, probably trying to pick up on any little body movement that would tell him something about John that the man wasn't coming right out and asking.

"We had fought. She went to bed early. I fell asleep in the living room watching TV." John was calm as he spoke, but with each new question he only grew angrier. The questions the detective was asking were all questions he had heard from him and the other cops before. They weren't getting anywhere on her case so they kept going back over what they already knew, as if it would make John feel better in knowing they hadn't completely given up on ever finding anything out about the fire and Mary's death.

"So, you were fighting?" Marsters began to tap his fingers on the desk in front of him, further aggravating John. John only nodded his head in response, not trusting himself not to blow up at the man sitting in front of him. "About?" Marsters shifted around in his chair and brought his right leg up to cross over the other.

"About work." John said in a huff. He was gripping the end of the arm of the chair he was sitting on. "She was mad that I had to stay late at my job so much recently." He didn't bother to elaborate any further than that; the entire conversation wasn't going the way John had wanted it to. It was as if they had all come up with the conclusion that John had been the one that had started the fire that night. That John had been the one that had killed his wife.

Marsters gave a nod of his head. "And the boys were there any problems with them?" John's eyes stayed glued to the fingers of the detective as they continued to tap against the top of his desk. He desperately wanted to get out of the police department; away from Marsters and the other cops they seemed to be fine with blaming the entire crime on him instead of hunting the real criminal. "Is that all?" John asked. He let his eyes look up from the man's hand to his eyes and at the nod he received he stood up out of the chair and stormed out of the building to head back home to his two sons.

**November 30, 1983**

John jolted awake at four in the morning that night from the same dream he had been having for a month now. Mary pressed flat against the ceiling with blood dripping from her abdomen. He can't save her no matter how hard he tries and ends up losing her once again. He had actually managed to get it somewhat under control for a while, but as soon as he had to stop by the police station on the twenty-seventh the dreams had come back full force. John slid off the couch and stretched his arms over his head. Right then, he felt like he had had a dark dream a week back that he couldn't remember if it was dream or if it had actually happened.

John dropped his hands to his side and walked towards the front door to slip on his hoes before walking out of the house to get some fresh air. It had been almost a month since Mary had passed, but he still couldn't sleep. The entire concept felt like a distant memory; one that he was beginning to doubt if he'd ever be able to experience again. He groaned as he stepped out into the chilly night air, automatically regretting the fact that he had once again went outside without a jacket. He rubbed his hands roughly against his arms to create some friction. The act only helped a little and after a while he gave up in favor of shoving his freezing hands into the pockets of his pajama bottoms, a pair that really weren't thick enough to protect him from the cold.

The house was still half gone. He hadn't bothered to get anyone to rebuild it yet. Mike and Kate had yet to complain even once about having them around. He wasn't judging how long he should stay by that. However, it did help that Kate had made it clear she didn't want him and the boys staying in some lousy motel. Kate had told him several times that was really no trouble, she was glad to help him take care of the boys while he got over his wife's passing. Something he doubted he'd ever truly be able to get over.

John stumbled across Mike and Kate's yard, across the street, and to the place he had called home since three months before Dean was born. He took in a deep breath as he came to the door and slowly turned the knob to push the door open. It would be the first time he had stepped into the house since November second. He drew in another deep breath before taking the first few steps into the house. He closed the door behind quietly behind him even though there really was no point in it.

It had been nearly a month, but the entire home still smelt faintly of smoke. With each new step he took, John could feel his body shaking even more. No matter what he tried to do to stop his trembles, he couldn't. He walked around the living room, letting his fingers glide across the cool wood of their couch side table. Dust had already settled there, mixed in with the soot from the holes in the ceiling from the nursery. His eyes immediately traveled up the wall to the ceiling there. If he glanced through the holes in the floor he could see the night sky, but he refused to let his gaze go there. He walked out of the room and to the next, the kitchen.

"What the hell are you doing in my home?" John growled out as soon as his eyes landed on a man wearing a suit; a man whose green eyes he remembered from the night of the fire. He hadn't known who the man was that night and he still didn't know who he was now. Until now, until this man showed up inside his home, he had basically shoved him out of his mind. He didn't bother letting the man speak before the next question of his rolled roughly off his tongue in a deep growl, "And who the hell are you?"

The man turned so that he was facing John, his heading cocking to the side with narrowed eyes in what seemed like slight confusion.

"John, I-"

"And how the hell do you know who I am?" John shouted. He took the steps forward it took to get him across the kitchen, curled his fists into the man's shirt, and slammed him roughly into the oven he had been standing in front of. He wasn't sure if he even wanted the man to answer his questions. Any answers he gave him, John was sure he'd only hear that this man had something to do with Mary's death. He didn't know how this man was connected to the fire; but he believed that this man, who was currently staring at him with curious eyes, had something to do with his wife's death.

"You would not believe me now, even if I told you."

"Try me." John growled out.

The man let out a huff of air. "My name is Castiel. I am an angel of the Lord." John scoffed at his answer and pulled him back a little before slamming him more roughly against the oven. Castiel didn't cry out in pain, didn't even flinch from the impact.

"Get out of my home!" John growled and tossed Castiel towards the exit of the house. The man barely even stumbled across the floor of the kitchen before he left John standing in the room alone. John turned around and slid down the front of the oven to collapse on to the ground. He stared at the wall in front of him. When his thoughts turned back to Mary, he burst into tears.

**December 4, 1983**

John felt like he was back in the marines. He couldn't sleep. Not straight through the night; not anymore. The smallest noise would jostle him from his slumber. If he tried, then it would take hours for him to fall back asleep, but most nights he didn't. Most nights he'd get up off the couch and find his way back to Dean and Sammy's room. He'd stand in the doorway for a few minutes before quietly walking into the room and sliding down the wall opposite their bed; watching them sleep in the crib that was almost too small for the two of them.

No matter if he'd start out thinking about Mary; his thoughts would drift back to Castiel, the man that had been in his house four nights back. He knew the guy had been lying when he told him he was an angel; what he didn't know was why the guy had lied to him in the first place if it wasn't for the fact that he had something to do with Mary's death. Every so often John would hear something; a whispering sound that was almost as if it was it was whispering his name, whispering their names.

It all kept John up for almost the entire night; forcing him to keep an eye on his sons and to never once leave their sides. He only drifted off to sleep once; at around six in the morning. It wasn't even an hour later when he was awoken by the familiar tug of Dean's hand on his sleeve. John blinked awake and offered his oldest son a soft smile; he reached out to Dean and pulled him onto his lap to wrap his right arm tightly around Dean's shoulders and placed his left hand on the back of Dean's neck. "Hey." He whispered, to keep from waking Sam who was still asleep in the crib, and kissed the top of his sons head.

Dean didn't respond to him, instead he burrowed his head into John's chest and curled his fingers into the fabric of his dad's shirt. It had been a long time since Dean had spoken to anyone, since the night of the fire when he had called John's name out in the hallway before he had been handed Sam. John tried on several occasions to coax the boy back into talking to him; to say anything to him or even Kate or Mike. So far, there was nothing. He'd tried to talk him into tossing the ball around the yard, but Dean had simply shaken his head no and went back to whatever he had been doing at the time.

John dropped his hand from Dean's neck and wrapped it under his legs. He used the wall behind him to stand up and carried Dean into the kitchen to find that he had apparently missed when Kate had woken up to go into the kitchen to cook breakfast for a lot of people who had yet to eat a full meal she prepared for them.

"John! You look absolutely exhausted!" Kate shook her head and sent him a glare. She threw the spatula down on the counter and walked over to John to take Dean from his arms. She placed him down in one of the chairs around the table and pointed to the chair next to him. "Sit." She commanded; when he didn't move to sit down, she sent him a glare and jabbed her finger into his chest. "John! You're not going to be any good to those boys of yours if you don't get enough sleep!" she was almost growling at him now, so he gave a nod of his head and collapsed into the chair next to Dean.

John knew all of this already; his state of paranoia just wasn't letting him get the sleep he so desperately needed. He'd drift off every so often and get a couple hours of sleep, but he'd wake up at the slightest sound that was made. Even when that sound was just Kate moving dishes around in the kitchen. For the most part, she tried to do this as quietly as she could but still always managed to wake him up. Kate had once told him to take cold medicine to see if it would help. The only thing it had done was make the nightmares seem more vivid then they already had been. A feat that John hadn't been sure they could cross.

"Did you get any sleep last night?" Kate asked. She was back to cooking the breakfast on the stove. Mike walked into the kitchen and sat down before John had the chance to answer, but he managed to catch the question his wife had asked and now was waiting for an answer from John as well.

"Yes." It wasn't exactly a lie. She only asked if he had _any_ sleep last night. An hour, though it wasn't much, was still _some_ sleep. He knew from the look she was giving him that she didn't believe him for one second but wasn't going to say anything about it for now. At least, she wasn't going to in front of Dean. John decided to change the subject. "I kept hearing things last night, it sounded like someone whispering." He said.

"Must have been the wind." Mike shrugged it off almost as soon as it was out of John's mouth. John hadn't remembered it being windy the night before. Though it was close to winter time now; it was windy almost every day. But still, it hadn't sounded like the wind. Not to John. Mike had come to pass off everything he had said lately; claiming that it was only the chatter of a grieving widower. John had never felt so angry towards his friends as he had then.


	3. Chapter 3

_Summary: Castiel had another charge before Dean; one that set everything in motion and pushed Castiel towards Dean.  
Chapter Title: Devil Fire  
Chapter Number: 3/?  
Word Count: 4,487 words / 15,244 total  
Rating: PG-13 for violence and language and character death : (  
Characters: John Winchester, Castiel, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Mike Guenther, and Kate Guenther.  
Pairing: None  
Spoilers: General spoilers for episodes up to the first episode of season two (not only in this chapter, for all of it).  
Disclaimer: I don't own anyone you recognize from the show. I also don't own Mike and Kate Guenther. If you don't know who they are; they really are neighbors of John and Mary Winchester. John writes about them in the journal that serves as Dean and Sam's reference guide for fighting demons.  
Important Note: Technically I already have a beta, but her schedule is just as hectic as mine is the semester so if anyone is up to the task of beta reading my story and annoying me until I get the next chapter typed up I'd really appreciate it! Perks? You get to read the next chapter before anyone else : ) Downfalls? You might have to do more nagging then actual beta reading…_

_I have decided that I absolutely despise days when I have to stay at school until ten o'clock at night when my classes start at eight in the morning and end at twelve noon. I had so much downtime between my last class and my review session for psychology, psych club, and then one of my school's traditions that I was able to crank out all of this… Though I suppose that makes the readers that actually enjoy this story very happy. This will more than likely be one of very few weeks that I'll be able to crank out more than one chapter a week._

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Chapter Three

**December 7, 1983**

John was furious. It had been over a month since the investigation into his wife's death had started and the police had yet to get anywhere resembling close to what had happened that night. They had stopped by Mike and Kate's house to ask him more questions. The same questions he had answered for them over a million times before. He had yelled at Marsters and his goons as soon as they showed up on the doorstep and asked the first question. The investigation was going nowhere. John was beginning to think that it never would get solved; not with the current officers in charge. They weren't doing anything new for her case; nothing that would bring him a step closer to finding out what had happened to Mary. To finding out if that guy that had been in their home that day had something to do with her death. He doubted they even knew who the guy was or that he had even been there the night of the fire.

_Where were you when the fire started?_ John had glared at Marsters as soon as the question was asked. He had told the man exactly where he had been that night, why he had been there, and any other questions about him being in the living room that night.

_How was your marriage? _Another question John was tired of answering. He had told them that Mary hadn't liked how much he had been working lately, but it couldn't be helped. She wouldn't yell to the point that he actually stopped working the extra hours; they had needed the money after Sammy was born. Other than that, there was never any fighting between them. Their marriage was rocky at times, but neither one of them would take their anger to the next level as the cops thought they had. He would have never hurt Mary. He'd never hurt the boys by hurting her. John would have never done what they were accusing him of.

_How was your relationship with the boys? _John had shifted uncomfortably at the question. The only reason it was being asked in the first place was because the fire had started in the nursery. Directly above Sammy's bed where Mary had been pressed against the ceiling; but he had grabbed Sammy out of the room and told Dean to get him out of the house. If the plan was to kill the baby, then why had he gotten them both out of the house and away from the flames? John didn't get why the police officers sitting in front of him were wasting so much time on him when they could be out there trying to find the real murderer.

_Did I remember anything else about that night?_ They didn't care. They kept asking him useless questions he had answered thousands of times before. John answered the questions in the exact manner he had every other time they had been asked. None of his answers changed and after a while of asking him questions they finally left him alone. And alone was right. By the time they had left the boys had been tucked into bed for the night. Mike and Kate had already left the room to get ready for bed. He was sitting in the living room with a cold beer in his hands with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company.

His thoughts kept him thinking about the one thing he didn't want to; Mary's death, and how the cops weren't doing a damn thing in the means of solving exactly what had happened on November second. Thirty-five days and they still couldn't even tell him if the cause had been due to faulty wiring. Thirty-five days and they were still telling him that they couldn't pinpoint the exact origin of the fire due to the damage. Thirty-five days later and John had all but given up on ever finding out what really happened to his wife.

John downed the beer propped in his hand and stood up to walk back into the kitchen to grab another. He came back into the living room a few minutes later, the next one already opened. He downed half of this one before he caught site of the journal he hadn't written in in three days. He reached for it and dragged it into his lap. He wasn't sure why he wanted to write down all that had happened that day, but he was sure that if it was down on paper then it wouldn't be running constantly through his mind. With each new sentence written he swallowed another large gulp from the beer in his hand until it was gone and he was confusing his words and the spelling of them. It didn't take him long to finish it off and he went back into the kitchen to grab his next.

Three paragraphs into his journal, he passed out mid-sentence.

**December 8, 1983**

The light from the sun woke John up the next morning. It bore into his eyes, threatening to cause the man to vomit right then and there. John let out a low groan before rolling off the couch. He couldn't hear the boys up, but he wasn't trying too hard to locate them. He needed something for the pounding headache he was experiencing right then. He stumbled forward until he reached the kitchen; the boys weren't in sight and neither was Kate. Mike was sitting there at the table and looked up as soon as he realized that it was John making his way to the kitchen cabinet where he knew the pain medication was kept.

"We need to talk John." John halted in his movements for only a moment before he was back to rummage through the cabinets until his finger tips glided across the lid of the bottle he was looking for. He stumbled to get the cap off, but managed to after a few seconds. He popped two pills into his mouth and swallowed, chasing it down with a glass of water he poured for himself. When he turned around to face Mike, the man was still staring at him expectantly. John didn't want this right now; he didn't need it. One more heart to heart was going to drive him insane, even if the two were just trying to help him.

John didn't say any of this to Mike. He was sure the man would have treated this conversation as he had the last few. It didn't matter to him if John didn't want to talk about it; it wasn't up to him. Mike was going to get him to talk even if it meant sitting quietly in the kitchen for five days straight. He was pretty sure if it came down to unmitigated will power, Mike would eventually come out as the victor. John placed the bottle of pills back into the cabinet and turned around to walk over to the table and sit down opposite Mike. If he was going to lose anyway, he definitely wouldn't be the first to talk.

"John; it's been a month." John mentally added the _and six days_ that Mike conveniently left out. He was sure that Mike wouldn't have appreciated being interrupted for that. "You need to get over this, for the boys sake. They need you to go back to work and to look after them, John." Mike was tapping his fingers on the table nervously, as if he was sure John would jump across the table at him for even saying that. He would have been right on a normal occasion, but his sleep deprived state and hangover only allowed him to sit in the seat across from Mike and take whatever the man decided to throw his way.

John had known there was a hidden agenda behind this talk before Mike had even opened his mouth. He wanted John to go back to work at the garage, not for the boys' sake but for the shops'. It didn't matter that he wasn't over Mary's death. It didn't even matter that in his emotional and physical state he'd more than likely snap at every customer that came into the place. All that mattered was that the shop always made more business when the two of them were there, working side by side to get the cars out of there faster. "No." John said calmly. At Mike's raised brow he continued, "My wife's dead Mike. She's not coming back. I can't go back to work."

Mike was either angry at him or frustrated at the fact that John couldn't see that his behavior was affecting more people than just himself. "John, you need to go back to the shop! It'll get your minds off of things." He said, in that annoying tone that people adapted when they were trying to console a two year old.

"Mary's dead, Mike! Going back to work isn't going to get my mind off of that!" John shouted, slamming his hands on the table. He was sure now, if only because no noises were coming from any part of the house, that he and Mike were the only ones in the house. He let his anger get the better of him as soon as he realized this. "You know what; you can have the fucking shop Mike. I'm not going back to it." He basically growled out before letting the chair squeal loudly against the wood floor as he stood up to leave the room.

Mike was staring at him in surprise. He had stopped cold in his tracks as if he was unable to move any longer. John was getting ready to leave the kitchen; to leave Mike sitting there by himself, but before he could even take a step towards the living room Mike spoke up once more. "You're going to throw away your life's work over this?" Mike snapped.

John didn't even know how the man could ask him that. His wife was gone; there was no way in hell he wanted to go back to work. He didn't even want to see the place that had caused them to fight that night. The place that had been the reason he had been in the living room that night instead of asleep in bed next to the beautiful blond woman he had been in love with since he got back from Vietnam. "Yes." John snapped right back, with more anger then he had originally intended.

"You can't do this John!" Mike tried to argue with him over it, but before he continued John interrupted him.

"Watch me." John stormed out of the room, grabbed his jacket and left the house. He glanced up and down the street he had been living on for four years now. He had already decided the night before that if he wanted anything done in Mary's investigation he'd have to do it himself. The cops were good for nothing more than to ask him worthless questions and he seriously doubted Mike or Kate would help him. Especially not Mike, not after the conversation they had just had.

John pushed his arms into the sleeves of his jacket and shrugged it on. He didn't know where to begin. Which house to go to first. He wasn't even sure if anyone would be awake or home at this hour, but he started out anyways. He knocked on each door of the houses on the street; trying to get any information on November second that they could give him.

Three hours and he had gotten about as far as the cops had. Most people hadn't even answered their doors to his knocks. They didn't want to face a grieving man. Either that or they didn't want to face the man they assumed had killed his wife. John was standing in front of Kate and Mike's house, but he didn't go inside. Instead he seated himself on the porch steps and stared at the house across the street. He needed to get someone to fix it back up; to get it looking the exact way it had been before the fire. But he wasn't even sure if he wanted to stay in the house anymore. They had lived there for four years. Four years with Mary and the boys. All that it offered now was a few pictures that had survived the fire and some cooking supplies.

John rubbed at his face to get rid of the sleep that was clouding his thoughts. He let out a frustrated sigh. Dropping his hands, he patted the pockets of the jacket he was wearing to find the familiar feel of his keys. He stood up from the porch steps and walked over to his car, a black '67 Chevy Impala. The doors squeaked in protest when he tried to open it, but he barely noticed after the five years he has had her. He shoved the keys into the hole and turned it until the engine roared to life. It took thirty minutes to get to the closest library, but at this point he didn't care as long as he could find something that would tell him what could have been the cause of the fire that night. He hopped out of the Impala as soon as he pulled into the parking lot and took the key out of the keyhole. He pocketed them back into his jacket and headed inside of the building.

Hardly anyone was there that Thursday, which was how he wanted it. He went straight to the librarian's desk and asked where the section on fires was. She typed away at her computer and after five minutes of getting the page to load up, she pointed him in the direction of the books he was searching for. John gave a quick nod of thanks before heading in that direction. He let his fingertips glide across the spine of the books as he searched the shelf for what he wanted. It didn't take him long to have a pile of books scattered recklessly over one of the tables in the back of the library, far off to the left so that no one would bother him.

John searched through the books as he tried to boot up one of the computers that the library had. It was pretty old, and took even longer then the librarians had trying to find the books he had wanted to look through, but it eventually came on and let him on the internet. He searched old police files, trying to find case that occurred in Lawrence, Kansas that had a similar MO to Mary's death. He was sure someone had been in his house the night of the fire and he was going to find out who it was. He didn't know what he'd do when he found the man, but he was pretty sure the police officers that suspected him of murdering Mary would have a new case against him.

**December 11, 1983**

_Mary's standing in front of him, in the nursery, with a smile on her face as she watches over baby Sammy asleep in the crib. John takes a step forward, a smile growing on his face. She's right there in front of him, smiling like nothing wrong had happened to her. She looks so real. So life like. John wants to reach out and touch her; to see if it was a dream or reality. So he does. He reaches out to her. It happens in a flash. She's back on the ceiling screaming out in agony as fire erupts around her. John screams out for her; reaches out to try and save Mary, but nothing changes._

John jolts awake once again from the same nightmare that had been plaguing his nightmares since the night after the fire. However, this night wasn't like the others. He could feel something, someone watching him. As if they were mocking him. He glanced around the room quickly, but found nothing out of the ordinary. It was the middle of the night; everyone else in the house was fast asleep. He desperately wishes that he could join them all in the blissful sleep they managed to slip into so easily. John rolled off the couch and made his way to the room he found himself going to at least once every night. He told himself it was to protect them; to watch over them and make sure nothing happened to them while they slept, but he knew it was as much for him as it was for them.

Sam and Dean were passed out in the crib still. They had both managed to be able to sleep throughout the night now that Dean started out sleeping in the crib, wrapping his arms securely around his younger brother in a very protective embrace. John wished that they didn't have to go through any of this, wished that Mary was still alive so that they wouldn't feel so afraid of the world around them. The both of them were too young for any of this. He knew that Dean would probably always remember the fire; his mother's death. However, Sammy would grow up without knowing Mary. He'd grow up without any memory of his mother, good or bad.

John would have started crying because of that but he managed to hold back. He was afraid that if he started then he wouldn't be able to hold back and then the boys would wake up from their nightmare free sleep. He wanted everything to go back to normal. He wanted his wife back so that Dean and Sam could lead a normal childhood instead of the one they were being forced to go through now.

It didn't take much more twists and turns from his thoughts to bring him back to thinking about the man that had been inside his house a week and a half ago. _Castiel_. He had told John he was an angel, but if he was then why hadn't he tried to save Mary that night instead of just standing on the side lines while the firemen rushed into the building. There was no way that guy could have been an angel. John didn't believe in them anymore. He didn't believe in anything anymore. What kind of a person would take Mary away from her family? No God John could ever put his faith in.

John let his exhaustion get the better of him after a while. He passed out on the floor of Dean and Sam's room. It was noon when he woke up again. He used the wall behind him to push himself onto his feet. This time he didn't bother with lunch or even going into the kitchen. He grabbed his jacket off the hook near the door and walked out of the house. John glanced down both sides of the streets before running across the road to his old home. The door creaked open when he turned the knob and gave it a slight push. Glancing around the room he found it in the exact same shape it had been the first night he had come back into the building. The smell of smoke was still faintly there, even after all this time. He was certain that wasn't going to change until someone rebuilt the nursery and other rooms with fire damage. John took a deep breath before he gathered up his courage and began to search the house for old photos he wanted to keep and any toy that the firemen had salvaged from the debris.

**December 13, 1983**

John was back at the library. He had hit a new found boost of energy that morning when he had called the cops and found out that they had yet again come up with nothing new on Mary's case. They had all the forensics back, but had found nothing of importance in the debris that had been left behind in the fire. It was all more than just a little frustrating. At least now he had found a means to channel his frustrations instead of taking them out on Mike. He was currently digging through the rest of the books on fires that he hadn't had a chance to look through during his last library visit. He wasn't sure what exactly he was looking for and most of the information was coming at him in blurs.

John was startled out of his research when the librarian, whose name was Amber, walked up to his table and cleared her throat. She gave him a sweet smile and handed him a roll of what he assumed was some type of film. "I found this; I don't know if it's exactly what you're looking for but it could help." He stared at the thing in his hands for a long moment before looking up at her.

"I don't know how to use this." He said, causing the woman to smile at him and wave him into a room. Amber talked him through how to use the microfiche and they searched through each roll separately. They only bothered the other when they found something interesting about fires or old cases that seemed to fit the MO of his wife's murder. A lot of the images on the microfiche were blurred and barely recognizable, but it all had helped him a little. On occasion they'd stop looking through the microfiche and get back to flipping through pages in books.

Neither of them had come up with anything that perfectly fit what had happened to Mary. John was losing hope that they ever would. He went back to the shelves after all the books in his stack were thoroughly searched. His fingers trailed over the spines of the books, directly below the titles, as he walked down the row of books. He stopped in his tracks when his fingers landed on a certain book. It was farfetched and he didn't even know why he'd ever pick the book up, but at this point it couldn't hurt.

John grabbed the book from the shelf and flipped it open. He sat down on the floor right there and began to read the book in his hands. It was a book on strange phenomenon's that couldn't happen. The further he read the more crazy it all sounded. There was no such thing as an evil entity. There was no such thing as angels. John stood back up and pushed the book roughly back into its place. The only reason he was even beginning to give into believing in such nonsense was because no one was giving him a real explanation as to how the fire had started. It was leaving his brain free to consider things he wouldn't normally even let himself think about.

John walked back to where Amber was sitting at the table they had been researching at for a few hours now and began to close the books he had been looking through. "I think I'm done for the day, Amber." He whispered.

"Ok." Amber nodded and began to close her books as well, "Don't worry about those, I'll put them back."

"Are you sure?" John asked quietly, unsure if he really should leave all of this to the librarian.

"Yeah, it's a slow day so I've got nothing better to do." Amber offered him a smile before she began to gather the small ones into her arms and walk back to where they had gotten them all from.

"Thank you then." John said, and left shortly after to return to Mike and Kate's house where Dean and Sammy would be waiting for him.

**December 14, 1983**

John jolted awake five minutes after he had fallen asleep drenched in cold sweat. He looked around the room quickly. He could feel the presence again. The one that had been mocking him a few days back for not being able to protect his family. It caused a shiver to run up his spine as he thought about something being in the room with him, watching him. It made John's thoughts jump back to the last book he had read in the library; the book that had talked about fires that had no real explanation. He remembered it saying that some people believed that fires could be started by strange entities; ones that he didn't believe in. Ones that he shouldn't believe in, but he couldn't stop thinking about it. It would have explained everything if it was true. If there really were these entities that could control fire, start them without being in the room.

John violently shook his head no, trying to read himself of the thoughts. Those things, they were just fairy-tales. Evil monsters that can control fires to hurt people don't really exist. He sighed and tossed his legs over the side of the couch. A pause. But then, the fire hadn't seemed all that natural to begin with. When he had reached out to get Mary off the ceiling, it had leapt at him. The fire had tried to keep him from getting to her, as if it was suppose to kill her. It had taken John a while, but he had convinced himself that Mary hadn't been on the ceiling that night. He had imagined the whole thing, but now he wasn't so sure. Everyone else thought he was crazy, even her family thought he had lost it after her death.

Now he's sure that there was something in Sammy's nursery that night that had killed Mary. Killed his wife.

John spent the entire night thinking about this and got up off the couch before Mike and Kate were up. He left the house and slipped into the driver's seat of the Impala. He needed more information on these things before he started searching. He needed to find out any information he possibly could, which meant he needed to go book shopping. Fifteen minutes of driving and he arrived at a book store that he knowingly held books on anything he could ever imagine that could be linked to the book he had found in the library. An hour later and he walked out of the store with five books on demons and mysterious fires.

Before he went back to Mike and Kate's, he stopped by a gun store. He bought two new pistols and a shotgun to replace the gun the firemen had retrieved from his house. It was old and he was sure it wouldn't work anymore and he wasn't going to risk Dean and Sammy's safety by trusting in something from his days in the marines. He left the guns in the trunk of the car, but brought the books inside and immediately began reading up on them all.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Chapter Title**__: We're Coming  
__**Chapter Number**__: 4/?  
__**Word Count**__: 6,562 words / 22,331 total  
__**Rating**__: PG-13 for violence and language and character death : (  
__**Characters**__: John Winchester, Castiel, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Mike Guenther, Kate Guenther, and Missouri Moseley.  
__**Pairing**__: None  
__**Spoilers**__: General spoilers for episodes up to the first episode of season two (not only in this chapter, for all of it).  
__**Disclaimer**__: I don't own anyone you recognize from the show. I also don't own Mike and Kate Guenther. If you don't know who they are; they really are neighbors of John and Mary Winchester. John writes about them in the journal that serves as Dean and Sam's reference guide for fighting demons.  
__**Important Note**__: Well, I hope all of you like this chapter. It took me longer to write than normal because I've had a million papers and midterms to write and prepare for and on top of all of that, I managed to hurt myself. Don't ask me how; it just happened. To make up for the longer wait, this chapter is slightly longer and has way more action in it then the previous chapters : )_

Chapter Four

**December 17, 1983**

John teetered on the edge of the steps, trying to decide if he wanted to take that first step forward to go into the house. He wasn't sure why he was doing this. He should be back at the house with Dean and Sammy. It was only one more. He had been going to psychics lately; to see if they could explain what had happened. It wasn't getting him very far and he wasn't learning anything he hadn't picked up from the books he had bought from the store. All of the psychics he had been to so far were total scams. They never told the people anything new; they just told them what they had said using different words. Either that or they said something so broad then it had to be true. This one wouldn't be any different. He should just turn around and head back to his car.

John took a deep breath and made to turn around, but took a step forward instead. One more wouldn't hurt. It wasn't like this, he glances down at the torn off piece of paper that he's holding in his left hand, Missouri Moseley would dampen his spirit even more by turning out to be another fraud. He had already assumed as much when he started out his journey of trying to find out about that night from psychics. If it had been two months ago, he would have laughed at the idea of himself going to talk to psychics about anything. Let alone going to talk to someone about supernatural beings. If had been two months earlier, he wouldn't have even let any of this come to the forefront of his mind.

The man reached his hand out to turn the knob, but before his hand had even touched the cool metal the door swung open to reveal a young African American woman with warm brown eyes and an even warmer smile.

"Well?" she was staring expectantly at him, "Are you going to stand around all day or are you going to come inside?" Her voice was had a slightly higher pitch then what he had expected from the woman. All the other psychics he had visited lately had adopted the television psychic persona. They all had deep, dream like voices that made him want to roll his eyes at their obvious phoniness. However, she simply hurried him inside and told him to _not mind the _mess—he really didn't know what mess she was referring to, the house was spotless—as if she invited him over for tea at least once a week.

Missouri seated herself down on the couch in her living room and motioned for him to take a seat across from her. John didn't move. He was frozen in place as he studied the woman. He still wasn't sure what to make of her. So far, she was different the others. A definite sign in John's book that she might be different, but that still didn't mean she was the real deal. Then again, he could spend years searching for an actual psychic and that wasn't time he actually had.

"Now, Mr. Winchester," she smiled at his obvious shock from her knowing his name without him actually saying it, "We don't have all day. So, please take a seat."

John moved forward and took his seat in the chair opposite of her. His hands ran down the length of his thighs than back up. He repeated the action a few more times before Missouri cleared her throat and he opted for clasping his hands together to stop his nervous habits. He had gone to several psychics the past week—all of which weren't even close to being the real thing—but each time he went to a new one he wasn't sure how or where he should start. It was like talking with a shrink; only the psychics wouldn't think him absolutely crazy if he randomly brought up monsters and demons. Then there was the fact that a shrink was a complete stranger; and although Missouri was as well, John felt he had known her all of his life.

Missouri shifted slightly in her seat. "The fire. Let's start with that." She said.

And John did just that. He told her everything he could remember form November second. He left nothing out and made sure to tell her everything about all of his insane theories of what had happened that night. Missouri would make the odd comment every now and then, but for the most part she stayed silent while he talked. It felt like forever between the time he finally stopped talking and when she finally said something.

"I believe you." Was all she said, but he immediately felt relieved as soon as the words were said.

"You, what?" John was so use to getting looked at like he was crazy or getting asked if he wanted to talk to someone that professionally equipped to handle someone like him. The psychics he had gone to before Missouri, he had left before actually talking to them himself. He had listened in on their sessions with their other clients and had easily picked up on how phony they were. After realizing this, he simply left them. Missouri was different. Missouri was the real thing. And Missouri was staring at him like he was a complete idiot for making her repeat herself.

"I. Believe. You." Missouri said slowly, which only added to the look she gave him for thinking he was a complete moron.

John gawked at her for a moment before he shook his head and began to fidget with his pants and hands once more. She was still watching him and if it wasn't for the seriousness of the visit, he was sure she would have started laughing at his actions. He wasn't sure why, but he found this reassuring. Not only was she the first person who didn't look at him like he was insane, but she was now the only person who tried to act like a normal person around him.

"You do?" John asked once more, trying to make sure he wasn't imagining the entire conversation between the two of them.

Missouri reached out and grabbed onto John's hands, dragging them forward until John was forced to lean towards her as well. She was staring directly into his eyes in what John thought was an attempt to get him to understand she wasn't joking around with him.

"John. All that research you were doing, it was all true. Well, maybe not that particular book, but demons they are real. They _do_ exist." Missouri unclasped her hands from John's to instead cup both of his cheeks.

John gave a slow nod, not sure what else to do. All his mind could think about at that point was that he had been right, or at least Missouri believed that he was. He wasn't sure if he was ready for this any longer. It wasn't like he uncovered some family secret or even what had really happened to Mary. Demons were _real_. The things that plagued his nightmares as a child weren't just figments of a too active imagination. They really existed.

"So, what happened to Mary, it was a demon?" John asked.

"I believe so." Missouri dropped her hands from John's face and grabbed onto his hands once more.

"What kind?" John was eager to find out anything on the monster that killed his wife, even if it was a just a small detail of the demon. He wanted to know anything and everything that Missouri knew about it.

"I don't know." Missouri watched as John's face fell significantly, "I would need to go over to your house to get a good enough reading on it."

And just like that, John's mood did a one-eighty. If that was all she wanted to do to get the reading she needed then he could do that. John jumped up from his seat, made plans for her to visit his home, and then left to back to Mike and Kate's house. He only stayed there long enough for him and the boys to eat lunch before he gathered the two up in the car and left to go back to Missouri's house. He didn't know why, but he wanted her to meet her.

Missouri immediately opened the door and took Sam from his arms, as if she had known Sam from the day he was born. Dean latched himself onto John's leg and stayed there for the first fifteen minutes of the time they spent in the living room of Missouri's house. After that time was up, Dean slowly began to open up to the woman and after a while he even began talking to her. It didn't take him much longer to begin talking to her like he normally would with Mary when she was still alive.

**December 20, 1983 at Kate and Mike's house**

Castiel glanced around the room, his gaze falling on the closed window across the room from himself. He watched as a car drove down the street and stopped in front of his charges old home. He knew today very well, had already been told what was to happen today. He knew exactly who was in that car and what they were doing there so he wasn't surprised when Missouri Moseley and John Winchester stepped out of the black Impala. They both stopped and stared up at the almost completely ruined house before they made the conscious effort to walk up the driveway to the front door. He watched as John hesitated in front of the door like he now did every time he went back to his home before he opened the door and walked inside.

When the two were inside, Castiel turned his attention to the two sleeping boys in the room with him. Dean was asleep in the crib, his tiny body curled around Sam in protective embrace, but he was beginning to stir. With each new clench of his fingers or twist of his arms, he came that much closer to waking up; which was definitely a problem. Castiel walked to the edge of the bed and crouched down into a kneeling position just as Dean awoke and sat up next to Sam. He gave Dean a small smile of reassurance when the boy finally faced him, but it didn't keep the look of pure shock from spreading across Dean's face.

"Who're you?" Dean quietly asked, already suspicious of the male kneeling in front of him. It had been three days since he had started talking again. Anything he did say came in short two to three word sentences, and most of it was only directed at his father. He still wasn't up for talking to Kate or Mike, but the stranger in the house seemed oddly safe. It was much like the same feeling he had when he first talked to Missouri.

"I am Castiel." He spoke in the same tone he would use when speaking to an adult, calm and collected with little to no emotion, "I need you to go back to sleep, Dean."

Dean didn't even register that it might have been odd this man to know his name when they had never met before. He didn't focus on that; he had already begun to remember something his mother had told him when she was still alive. She had tucked him in at night with the same words and had told him each night of stories that made it easier for him to fall asleep at night.

"Castiel? Like the angel." Mary had told him each night of the angel of that day. It was to make sure Dean knew that there was always someone watching over him, even when Mary and John were sound asleep in the next room.

"Yes, like the angel." Castiel nodded at the young boy sitting before him, "Now, you really must go back to sleep."

"I'm not tired." Dean said, his father's stubborn nature already beginning to show itself in the boy.

Castiel let an amused smile grace his features as he bowed his head in an attempt to hide it. He lifted his head as soon as it vanished from his face. He reached out and patted the small spot on the bed beside Dean, "Lay down under the covers and I shall help you."

Dean eyed Castiel suspiciously, but did as he was told. He slipped under the covers, slapped his hands down on the bed beside his tiny frame, and waited expectantly. Castiel placed his forefinger and middle finger lightly against the center of Dean's forehead. It took only a second for Dean's eyes to flutter shut as the boy fell into a very deep slumber. One that Castiel knew would keep him from waking up during the events of the day. He quickly reached over and placed his fingers on Sam's forehead as well, putting him into an even deeper slumber.

Castiel stood up from his kneeling position beside the crib and stood in the middle of the room. He undoubtedly looked awkward standing there or at least out of place, but he had to be there. He had to wait for John to get home later that morning to find had—_will_—happen that day. He could already sense the approach of the monster. The lights had begun to flicker almost as soon as he stood up. He could also feel and see the sky darken into what was undoubtedly an oncoming storm caused by the demon that would be coming through the front door at any moment, hoping to get to the boys asleep in the makeshift nursery. Of course, he wouldn't let it.

Castiel heard the door slam open as it entered the home of the Guenther's. He could hear the scream come from the other room, but he did nothing to help. He was there to protect and watch over the boys, nothing more. Kate Guenther was meant to die that day. Zachariah had made that very clear before he had let Castiel leave. He wasn't to do anything to prevent Kate's death. If she didn't die, John wouldn't leave Lawrence and if John didn't leave Lawrence than _nothing_ would be right. John _had_ to leave Lawrence.

Another scream echoed throughout the usually quiet house. The house was back to its normal quiet a moment later when the screaming suddenly stopped, causing Castiel's gaze to dart to the door and remain there for the longest time. He wasn't sure how much time had passed between the sudden stop of the screaming and the moment when the handle slapped down on his side of the door. Castiel didn't hesitate. He raised his hand and the second the door swung open he let a blast knock the demon backwards, right into the table and couch that John Winchester had been using as his bed for the past few months.

**December 20, 1983 at John's home**

John took in a deep breath the moment he planted his feet down on the wood floor of his former home. After all this time; it still didn't smell like the home he knew. It was frustrating to think about, but that wasn't why he was actually here this time. He wasn't here to remember all the things that had happened in that house or to find things that had survived the fire. He was there for Missouri. She had needed to see his home before she could even attempt to figure out who or what had done this. John kept his eyes trained on the woman, no longer sure of what he should say or do under the circumstances.

Missouri was walking cautiously through the living room with her eyes tightly shut. He wasn't sure what she was looking for or if he even wanted to know when she found it. All he knew was that even if he didn't want to know who or what had done this to Mary, he still needed to find out. He was tired of Mike and Kate telling him he'd get through this quicker if he stopped dwelling on who had caused the fire, and instead focused on grieving. No reason they told him made sense and the words they said to try and console him only frustrated him until he couldn't talk to them anymore. Missouri Moseley was the only person that hadn't shrugged him off as just a distraught widower and because of that he had decided to give her a shot.

Their first conversation hadn't gone exactly as he thought it might. He hadn't expected her to come right out and tell him that there really were such things as demons and ghosts in the world. Well, ghosts he could understand. He doubted there wasn't a psychic alive, fake or real, that didn't believe in actual ghosts, but demons; as in black smoke, demonic possession, and evil deals demons? She had assured him that they were in fact real, but what demon had attacked his family she wouldn't be sure of without coming to his home. Which was why they were there now; walking around the living room and waiting for her to get a sense of what had been here on November second.

"Oh yes; there was definitely something _evil_ here that night." Missouri whispered; her voice almost too quiet for John to catch completely. She turned around and opened her eyes to once again look at him, "Where did it happen?"

"Upstairs. In the nursery." John's gaze searched for the stairs before he turned around and walked towards them, but he hesitated at the bottom step. Every time he had gone into his home previously he had made a point to stay clear of the upstairs. He still wasn't sure if he'd be able to go into the room where Mary had died. He didn't even want to get near the room, but that's where Missouri needed to be to get the best reading of whatever had done this to his family.

"Well, come on then." Missouri grabbed him by the arm and led him up the stairs. When they reached the top she turned to the left without needing him to tell her where exactly the nursery was. She let go of his arm and slowly opened the door to the room. She paused before she stepped inside Sam's room; the essence of whatever demon, or whatever, that had come to his home that night seemed to overtake her. John stepped closer to the door, but he didn't budge after that. He opted to stay out of the room and instead balled his hands into the fabric of his coat pockets as he watched her carefully.

Missouri took a shaky step towards the crib and reached out to grab onto what was left of the railing. She looked down at the spot where she knew that little Sam had been sleeping that night. She could sense the evil in the room; could sense the demon, but she didn't know what kind it could be. She couldn't even give the man a guess as to what it could be. Missouri turned around to face John who was still standing patiently in the door frame, his eyes broadcasting the fear he felt to her without her needing to ask.

"I can feel an echo of it John. It's a horrible presence." Missouri said as calmly as she could, which wasn't all that calm when she thought about it. Her voice was shaking as bad as her hands were. She knew it was doing nothing to sooth the man still standing in the door way; to see her shaking as badly as she was, but she couldn't help herself.

"What is it?" John asked.

"I… I don't know, John. All I can tell you is that it's evil. Pure evil." Missouri shook as she spoke, but she managed to continue, "I've never encountered anything like it. It's so powerful..."

Missouri's eyes snapped shut. Her hands tightened painfully around the burnt wood that was left of the crib; it almost crumbling from the pressure her small hands made. John watched as her breathing began to come to her in short waves. She was hyperventilating; only she didn't seem to be affected by it at all. Instead she raised a shaky hand and pointed towards John; past John, to the stairs behind him. All of a sudden, it all just stopped. The shaking and the hyperventilating; she was standing before him as if all of it hadn't been happening. She opened her eyes wide to stare at him.

"John. The basement." Missouri said in an eerily calm voice as she continued to point to the stairs.

John didn't wait for an explanation. He turned quickly and ran towards the stairs, taking them three at a time until he got to the first floor of his home. A turn to the right and a short dash to the kitchen had him standing in front of the door that led to the room she wanted him to go into. He wasn't sure what he'd find there, but he wasn't about to wait. He swung the door open and took those stairs two at a time until his feet were firmly planted on the dirty floor. They had only used the room for storage when Mary was alive and even then they never put more than a few boxes down there.

John took a few slow steps forward. His gaze traveled around the room, searching for anything that would give him a clue as to what Missouri had witnessed or sensed while she was upstairs in Sam's room. He knew as soon as his eyes landed on it what it was. On the wall, in what he could only assume was blood-Mary's blood?—was the words _We're coming_ like she had seen in her vision the first day he had walked into her home to speak with her about what he had spoken to every psychic before her. Only there were three more words written on the wall beside them; words she hadn't seen in her vision. _We're coming __**for the children**_.

John stumbled backwards a few steps. He caught his balance and before he had time to think about it any longer; he darted back up the stairs, nearly knocking Missouri down in the process. He didn't bother with an explanation. He bolted out of his old home and ran across the street to Kate and Mike's house. The only time he paused on the porch in front of the door. That morning he had made sure to close it before he left and he knew Kate and Mike never left it open unless they were planning on going somewhere right away. He couldn't remember them making any plans that day, but he was now hoping that they had and forgot to tell him about it. The door was slightly ajar and he didn't want to step inside. He was afraid of what he'd find after reading that message on the wall.

A hand grabbed a hold of his arm. John jumped slightly at the sudden contact until he realized it was only Missouri, who was out of breath after trying to keep up with him. She was staring up at him through wide eyes, silently and politely asking him what the hell was going on. He didn't answer. Instead, he reached out and pushed the front door of the place he had lived in since Mary's death open. He took the first step inside and froze at the sight before him.

Blood. Everywhere. On the walls and the floor. It coated the carpet and covered the couch. John registered the intake of breath from the woman behind him as she let the scene wash over her, but he didn't move to console her. His gaze had landed on the cause of the all the blood. Kate Guenther. She was on the floor; a huge gash in her neck and some more shallow wounds scattered all over her body. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling in horror. He doubted he'd ever be able to get the image out of his mind.

"John. The boys. You have to get them and get out of here." Missouri pushed on his upper body until he finally registered what she was trying to get him to do. He nodded his head and made his way to the room he knew Sam and Dean were in. He made sure to side step each spot of blood on the carpet on his way there. John paused in front of the shut door before he reached out and tried the handle. The door slipped open without him so much as turning the knob. A strong gust of wind flung him backwards into the couch before he could take more than one step inside the room. He could hear shouts of his names, but his vision was blurry and his head hurt too much for him to even begin to try and distinguish who was calling out to him.

Two sets of hands grabbed both of his arms and hoisted him to his feet. He felt sick, dizzy, and all he wanted to do was make it to his boys; to see if they were ok. The hands on his arms kept him where he was until they were sure he wasn't going to fall down on the ground once they let go of him. It turned out to be a good thing. He wasn't sure if he would have been able to stand on his own after that.

"John, I am very sorry. I thought you were someone else." John recognized the voice. It wasn't Missouri. It wasn't even Mike, but he recognized the voice from somewhere. When he finally put the voice with a face all he wanted to do was get away from the person that was trying to keep him from falling over. He thought the man would leave him alone after a while, but there he was in the flesh; acting as if it was his right to be there with them.

"You!" John grabbed a hold of the man's shirt and slammed him harshly into the wall behind him, "What did you do to Kate?"

"John! It wasn't him!" he heard Missouri shout, but he didn't release his grip the man.

"She is correct." It was all Castiel gave as an answer to John's question. John released him a moment later; choosing to go to his sons instead of dealing with Castiel. He went to the side of their bed and knelt down beside them. In the back of his mind it registered to him that Dean would normally be awake at this hour, but he wasn't stuck on that. He checked both of them carefully for anything out of the ordinary; wounds or markings on their bodies that hadn't been there that morning. There was none. They were simply sleeping much longer than they normally would have that morning.

John shook Dean lightly to try and wake him, but nothing changed. "Dean." He whispered quietly. He didn't want to wake Sammy, but he needed to get Dean up and see if he had witnessed anything. No such luck. Dean continued to sleep in the crib beside his brother.

"He won't wake up." Castiel said, and left it at that as if he thought John would understand what he meant. At the glare he received from John, he continued. "I put him to sleep so that he didn't walk in on _that_."

John didn't bother to respond. He quickly began to pick things up from around the house that belonged to them. Like Missouri said; they needed to get out of there. It was no longer safe in Lawrence and he wasn't about to put his two sons in danger. He was going to get them away from all of this. It didn't matter that he still had questions for Castiel about what exactly happened in the Guenther house that day, but all that could wait until everything was packed up and they were out of there. Missouri helped him by gathering up the boys and taking them to the Impala across the street. She came back inside the house a moment later to find that all of John's and the boys' belongings were now packed up in bags.

The bags were loaded into the car without much care as to what happened to the contents inside. John waited for Missouri to climb into the front seat of the Impala before he grabbed a fistful of Castiel's shirt and slammed him into the side of the car. He wanted answers and it seemed like the only person that could give them to him was a guy he had only meet after Mary's death; someone he really didn't believe he should be trusting, but he really had no choice.

"What's going on, _Castiel_?" he spat the name out as he glared at the slightly smaller male.

"John, I will not be getting into this with you here. Right now you have to go." Castiel said, and before John could ask another question the angel was gone. He vanished out from his grasp, leaving John standing by his car while Missouri waited for him to take them to her home. John let out a faint growl before climbing into the driver's seat of the Impala, putting the car in drive, and setting off for Missouri's home. He could wait a little while longer for his answers. As long as Castiel didn't vanish again and refuse to come back for a couple of weeks. It didn't matter how long he waited. It only mattered that he solved Mary's case.

**December 23, 1983**

John paced impatiently in front of Castiel. Occasionally he would stop dead in his tracks while facing the angel and open his mouth like he was going to say something, but picked up his pacing once more instead. He didn't know what to say to the angel. Nothing made the slightest sense to him any longer, but he knew that the angel knew at least some of the answers to the questions he had—he just had to figure out how to ask the questions he wanted answered.

Castiel watched his charge with an unchanging face. He was growing quickly inpatient with the man's incessant need to continue to walk back and forth in front of him, but he was wary of actually showing John that he should stop pacing and simply come out and ask whatever was ailing him. Of course, he could simply upset the man further. In the past three days Castiel had failed to protect Kate from whatever monster had entered the Guenther house, put his boys into a very deep slumber, forced John to leave the Guenther's without talking to Mike first, and he kept popping in and out of Missouri's home without so much as a warning to John beforehand.

Missouri had gladly taking in the Winchester's after everything that happened. She had assured John that whatever attacked Mary and went after his boys wasn't going to get into her home if she had anything to do about it and for some reason, John had believed her. She was sitting in the living room with them, but she looked exhausted from being forced to stay until three in the morning while John tried to think through exactly what he wanted to say to the angel leaning against her dresser.

John spun on his heel and stomped over to Castiel, stopping when he was standing an inch from the other male. His eyes were narrowed into a glare as he stared at the angel. He still didn't know how to come out and say what he wanted to ask, but he knew that pacing around Missouri's living room wasn't going to get them anywhere. Plus, he was never all that good at thinking things through. They'd get absolutely no where if he remained in his head.

"_What the hell's_ going on?" John shouted the first part, but lowered his volume as soon as he remembered that Dean and Sam were asleep in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

"I do not know." John curled his fingers into the white fabric of Castiel's shirt, pulled the angel closer to his body, and then slammed the male's body into the dresser.

"What do you mean, you don't _know_?" John was all but growling now. He wanted answers and the angel wasn't giving them to him.

"I only know what my superiors tell me." Castiel stared at the man before him unblinkingly; he didn't even flinch when John pulled him from the dresser and repeated the actions he had done a second before.

"And that is?" John asked, his tone pleading.

"The demon that killed your wife; he's gone, John. He left Lawrence yesterday. If you want to find him, you have to leave too." John fell forward at the last word as Castiel vanished out of his grasp.

John slapped painfully on the top of the dresser and turned around to face Missouri. She was standing now, walking towards him. She raised her hands to cup the sides of his face.

"He's right, you know." Missouri said.

John sighed and nodded his head at the woman. He had to leave, but he needed some sleep first. It would do no good to hit the road this late at night with little to no sleep under his belt. He shied away from the woman and made to walk towards his room, but stopped when he heard her voice from behind him.

"John, you take care of those boys for me." Missouri said. He heard her foot steps behind him, but he was still shocked when Missouri was standing beside him instead of heading off to her bedroom. She reached up, grabbed him by the shoulders, and pulled him down into a hug that was meant to be a goodbye. She already knew he wouldn't be there in the morning. She made sure to write him a note as to where he should go first before she went off to bed.

**December 25, 1983**

John didn't sleep much that night. He had spent most of the time heading to Nebraska. He was going to the place in Missouri's note. A small bar in Nebraska called Harvelle's Roadhouse. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to bring his boys to such a place, but in the note she had assured him that the owners knew a lot about hunting down demons of all kinds. He still wasn't all that sure about it, but if they could teach him how to track and kill the thing that took Mary from him then he'd give it a shot.

He had stopped at hotel maybe a mile or so away from the Roadhouse after Sammy began to get cranky from being stuck in his car seat for so long. Dean hadn't been happy either, not use to being forced to sit still for long car rides. John paid for the room with a little of the money he had obtained from Mike after the man bought the shop from him. The boys had fallen asleep shortly after they entered the room, both curled up in the middle of one of the beds. On the other hand, it had taken John a couple of hours before he finally fell into a light slumber.

A couple more hours passed before he woke up in the dead of the night. John's eyes glanced over to the clock on the bedside table between his bed and the boys' bed. It read two o'clock in the morning; Christmas already. It felt odd. Their first Christmas without Mary. It was simple, way too simple when he thought about what Sam and Dean deserved. He had made sure to put up a tree, but it was nothing compared to the tree they had put up when Mary was still alive. She would always make sure to keep him around the house one weekend out of the month so that they could decorate it as a family. John would mostly stand around until they needed him to help decorate the top of the tree. Dean still did most of the decorating up top, he just did while in his father's arms.

The tree in the corner of the motel room was nothing compared to those memories. It was a scraggily looking small tree. Dean didn't say anything bad about it though. It was probably because the boy hadn't felt like celebrating Christmas this year without his Mom.

Dean woke up around the same time he did every day and John let him open the presents that were poorly wrapped under the small tree. Every gift was sports related. He was trying to return them to some sense of normalcy, but he doubted it had worked. He didn't even know if Dean would want anything to do with sports any more. He was too old for t-ball now and he didn't know if Dean would want to go out for an actual little league team and John didn't push it.

John decided early on that day that he wasn't going to bother with driving up to Harvelle's Roadhouse yet. He wanted to spend the day with his children instead of complete strangers. He wasn't even sure if the place would be open on Christmas. Instead, they stayed in. Dean had some of his old self back; he talked to John more now after meeting Missouri and even played around with the sports equipment. He didn't leave the hotel room, but he tossed the football around inside the room with John. They were both careful not to accidentally hurt Sam or to break something in the room.

John received a call around noon from Detective Marsters; the man that took lead in Mary's case. Her case had officially been declared closed.

**January 1, 1984**

John had never liked this time of year. It had been Mary's favorite. She loved the New Year. Each year she would make a New Year's resolution and unlike most people, she'd actually completed hers. He remembered her trying to get him to make one every year since they started dating, but he had refused each time. He never saw the reason to make a promise to himself to do something he probably would never do. She had always been disappointed in him for not doing it, but he had shrugged it off each time.

This year was different. He was going to make a resolution to himself, and he was going to do it no matter how long it took him. It didn't matter if it took him longer than to the end of the year. All he wanted to do was complete it. His resolution? No matter how long it took, no matter what it took, he'd find out what happened to his wife. He'd find the demon that took her from him and kill him.

-/-

**Important Note**: (_contains slight spoilers_) I tried to tie in all the Supernatural extras there are. Meaning? The online journal, the show itself, the Supernatural Origins comic, and what I've read of the printed John's journal. I hope it still makes sense. I mean, all four sources have different takes on so many things that happened before John became a hunter that it's hard to figure out which one to use. So I combined the four. In the online journal it doesn't mention Missouri's vision of the words or the death of some of John's friends, but it does say they were staying with Mike and Kate. However in the Supernatural Origins comic it mentions they were staying with someone else who died the day that Missouri visited John's old home. And in the show; Mike Guenther makes an appearance, but Kate is never mentioned. So I combined all of it and came up with this chapter… If you liked it let me know : ) and even if you didn't. Any constructive criticism or words of praise are greatly appreciated and keep me going!


	5. Chapter 5

_**Chapter Title**__: Death and Dying  
__**Chapter Number**__: 5/?  
__**Word Count**__: 7,234 words / 29,565 total  
__**Rating**__: PG-13 for violence and language and character death.  
__**Characters**__: John Winchester, Castiel, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, 'H', Caleb, Jacob, William Harvelle, and Ellen Harvelle.  
__**Pairing**__: None  
__**Spoilers**__: General spoilers for episodes up to the first episode of season two (not only in this chapter, for all of it) as well as for John Winchester's Journal.  
__**Disclaimer**__: They don't belong to me.  
__**Important Note**__: Sorry this took longer than I said it would in my profile (for those that looked). I was in a car accident and couldn't use my right hand for a while so typing was very hard. And then college started up again so I've been swamped with papers, projects, tests, quizzes, and online assignments. I think I chose the majors/minors with the most writing… I did not mean for this to happen, but it has taken up a lot of my outside writing time so it's been crazy trying to get this chapter written and posted. And then I didn't even meet my second deadline… which was to post before the 12__th__… The chapter got lengthier than I thought it was going to be._

_Now on to good news: I've finally got to the chapter where John becomes a hunter and Castiel will be in it more as well as a few other angels that you might see. So the chapters will probably start to get longer than the previous ones. Oh and reviews keep me going! If you have any questions and/or comments leave me a review and I'll try to reply to you as soon as I can. Thanks for all the reviews so far =3 I really appreciate the kind words!_

_**Oh and **__I haven't watched the final two episodes of this season yet, I'm kind of afraid to after all that happened this season, so it would be great if you don't spoil anything for me if you review. I'll get around to watching them eventually, but not yet._

Chapter Five

**January 5, 1984**

It had been twelve days since John Winchester left Lawrence, Kansas. He hadn't taken the drive to where the Roadhouse was; the place hadn't even crossed his mind for longer than a few seconds since he left Missouri's house. He had spent most of the days taking care of Dean and little Sammy. Most of the nights were spent trying to find get some desperately needed sleep or when he couldn't than with Castiel. The angel had taken to sticking around more lately. John didn't know why, but he also didn't care. The angel gave him someone to talk to—at least someone that said more than unintelligible mumbles or short sentences about what exactly they were doing in a hotel room for so long—even if some nights Castiel only showed up to urge him to go to the Roadhouse. That was the exact conversation they had had earlier that morning, before the boys woke up.

Castiel had been in a fouler mood that morning then the visits previous. It seemed to John that the angel was trying to will him to going to the hunter's bar by glaring him into submission. John had assured the angel that he would be going there; it was simply a matter of time before he finally got up off the hotel bed and drove the couple of blocks to the Roadhouse. Castiel's deepened glare did little to assure John that the angel believed him.

Other than their heated arguments about when John should go to the Roadhouse, they talked about demons and about Mary. John had quickly grown accustomed to the angel's presence; he had even grown to like their talks. Although Castiel showed little emotion when it came to their conversations, he did bring John a little comfort. He didn't mind when Castiel randomly showed up in the hotel room—never when Dean and Sam were awake—to talk or urge him to seek out the hunters so he wasn't about to upset him by not going to the Roadhouse. He just didn't know when he should go or if he should take Sam and Dean with him.

No. He couldn't leave them here alone. Dean was only four years old; John wouldn't leave him to take care of Sammy. He had to take them, but he didn't know how friendly or welcoming the people at the bar would be. He didn't want to take them both in there, but he couldn't leave them here. John couldn't even leave them with Castiel. He had no idea when the angel would be called away from there and he didn't know how long it would take to talk to the hunters. There really was no other choice but to bring Dean and Sammy along with him.

John shifted uncomfortably in the hotel room chair and looked between his two sons. Dean was sitting on the edge of his bed watching television. He had gone back to not talking to John other than when he absolutely had to after he realized they weren't going back home to Lawrence. Sam had stopped crying as much as he had been in the first few weeks after Mary's death and had even begun to walk.

John stood from the seat. He walked over to where Sam was standing up beside the bed, clutching the sheets with his tiny fists, and scooped him up into his arms. He grabbed the remote from on top of the table with his free hand and turned the television off.

"Come on Dean, we're going for a little drive." John watched as Dean angrily scooted off the side of the bed until his feet were firmly planted on the ground.

John grabbed the keys to the Impala from the table closest to the door and left the hotel room. He paused on the concrete walkway to close the door behind him; his gaze shifted to where the Impala was parked in reverse to find Dean scrambling into the passenger seat. He walked over and handed Dean his baby brother and pushed the door to the car shut, it squeaking slightly in protest at his efforts. He jogged to the other side of the car and slid into the driver's seat. He didn't bother with seat belts; already sure that Dean would ignore his scolding since he had been ignoring everything that came out of his father's mouth of late. The drive to the Roadhouse wouldn't take much time; it was only a mile or two away from their current living arrangement.

The roar of the Impala died down as John swung it into a parking space of a rundown looking building and put it in park before turning the engine off. John climbed out of the safety of his car and eyed the building in front of him with mild distaste. He was beginning to doubt his faith in the angel that he so blindly trusted. Castiel hadn't led him astray yet, but this building couldn't be the place that the angel had wanted him to go. However, there it was. A building with a big sign hanging above the door announcing that it was indeed Harvelle's Roadhouse. The bar that was supposedly full of hunters that could help him out or at least get him started.

John's gaze fell down until they landed on the sign in the window. It was a neon sign with the word 'open' written in the middle of a neon blue circle. He wasn't sure the sign was telling him the truth. From what he heard it sounded like there was no one inside the place and there were definitely no cars around. The place looked deserted. He looked down to see that Dean was already making his way over to the wooden door of the bar. His hand reached out on impulse to wrap tightly around the small arm of his son whose head snapped around to show John that he wasn't exactly happy about being treated like a child at that precise moment.

"You stay close." John pulled Dean back until he was walking beside him. He released his grip on Dean's arm to push the door to the bar open and silently cursed to himself when Dean just waltzed through without even seeming concerned about what exactly could have been on the other side. He followed the boy inside and he reached out to pull Dean right back to him. "What did I tell you?" his tone was harsh even if the words were whispered; he didn't see the stubborn look on his child's face since his gaze was searching around the room and had found it almost entirely empty save for a single body that was twisted in an awkward position on the pool table across the room. He didn't know whether or not the man was dead or alive and didn't want to stay long enough to find out. He wouldn't have stayed either if it wasn't for the fact that Dean had once again forgotten his earlier comment and had begun to venture further forward into the place.

"Dean." He scolded as he took a step forward and made as though to grab his son once more and pull him closer; his actions halted when movement out of the corner of his eyes caught his attention. John almost lost his balance from the added weight of a growing Sammy when he whirled around to his right and eyed the figure of a dirty blond headed man standing behind the counter.

"This isn't a good place for kids." The man drawled; his arms were brought up to cross over his chest as his gaze dropped to Dean.

"I know." John didn't meet the stranger's eyes. He busied himself with shifting Sam to his other side to give his left side a break for the time being. He finally looked back to the man when Sammy stopped wriggling in his grasp after being moved so many times in such a short amount of time. "I didn't have a place to-" he cut himself off out of annoyance from even bothering to try and explain himself to someone he had never met before in his life, "Look, I just." He couldn't find the words he needed as he stumbled over the few words. He didn't know what to say, where to begin, or if he should even be saying any of this at all. And the stranger was no help. He was only standing there with his arms crossed waiting for John to finally say something that actually sounded more intelligent than the ramblings that could barely be understood.

"My wife, Mary, she died." No, that wasn't the right place to start. He didn't know where to begin, but he knew that wasn't it. John was distraught. He wanted to go through with the reason he came here, if only to get Castiel off his back, but at the same time he wanted to turn tail and leave the place before he had the chance to say anything more. His eyes darted between the figure behind the bar and the door that would lead him back to the Impala.

"Nevermind, I'll just." John shifted Sammy back to his left side and turned around to leave the bar without even finishing his sentence.

"Wait!" he was already halfway to the door when the booming voice halted him in his steps. He turned around to face the man that had spoken with a look of pure agony. He wanted to leave, not spend the day recounting his wife's death for the hundredth time.

"The name's William Harvelle, but everyone calls me Bill. Now, come on and sit down." Bill motioned the seat in front of him and fixed John with a warning look when the ex-marine didn't move for a moment. Bill turned around and grabbed two glasses off the shelf behind him and placed them on the counter in front of him just as John pulled the stool out and rested his weight on it.

John bent over and lowered Sam to the ground to give him a break from being carried all day. He watched the boy waddle off to find his brother, who was over near the pool table and silently staring up at the figure that still hadn't moved. In the back of his mind he registered the sound of liquid being poured into two glasses, but he didn't remove his attention from his sons until he heard the voice of Bill from behind him.

"How'd it happen?" Bill asked and took a large gulp from the whiskey in his glass.

John turned back around in his seat and stared at the amber liquid in his glass. It didn't take much convincing from his mind before he reached out with his right hand and downed the drink in one go. He placed the glass back on the counter and raised his hand to wipe at the moisture that had managed to escape his mouth. Five minutes passed before he finally opened his mouth and let everything pour out. He started with Mary's death and ended with coming to the bar. There were only five breaks in his ranting where he stopped talking to finish off the newly poured whiskey that appeared in his glass before he was finished and he was left to wait until Bill said something.

Bill rested his palms flat on the cool wooden surface in front of him and leaned forward ever so slightly. He looked to the door as John had done not too long ago, only he wasn't looking towards it as a means to escape. John's gaze followed his to the door so he wasn't prepared when a loud smack of hands hitting against one another rang out in the air in front of him. He nearly jumped out of his skin as he turned back around and eyed Bill curiously.

"Caleb, get off the pool table and get over here!" Bill shouted before planting his hands once more on the counter and leaning forward so he could talk low enough so that John was the only one that could hear.

"I don't know about this demon of yours," he watched John's face fall but he continued before the ex-marine could utter a single syllable, "But that doesn't mean I can't help you."

The familiar sound of wood scraping against wood entered through John's ear, signaling that Jacob finally managed to make his way over to the bar to join their conversation. John glanced to his right to get a good look at the man after only being able to see the back of his head earlier. He was young, at least younger then Bill and himself, with short dark brown hair and equally as dark brown eyes that looked like they weren't quite focusing on the present. He looked weary and worn down from many years of chasing demons. John didn't know how or why the kid got into the hunting business, but he didn't actually care in the first place. John's attention was drawn away from the man and back to Bill when he heard the man's voice once more.

"All I know is that if I was in your shoes I'd do whatever it took to make sure the bastard is dead." Bill grabbed the glasses from the counter and put them in the counter that led to the kitchen area to his left. He returned with a folder that he pulled out from between the wall and the many glass bottles of alcohol and slapped it down on the counter in front of John. The folder was flipped open a moment later and spun around so that John could see the files enclosed.

"Not really the best job to send you on, but," Caleb gave a small shrug of his shoulders as if that were explanation enough and glanced back down at the file, "There have been some attacks at a local cemetery. We don't know what's doing it, but maybe it'll give you some answers. If it doesn't, well, at least you get some experience in the field."

"I'll go with you, to provide some back up, so we'll meet back here tomorrow morning and you can leave those two with my wife Ellen." Bill closed the file and pushed it across the counter so that John would take it with him to look over. John furrowed his eyebrows in confusion as he took the folder in his hand and glanced up at Bill. The hunter let out a sigh of annoyance before saying, "Look, you need some rest. You're new to this so whatever's behind the attacks already has the upper hand on us and I don't need you passing out in the cemetery from exhaustion."

John nodded his head and slipped off the stool with the file in his hands. He glanced around to find Dean sitting on the floor next to Sam. He walked over to them and picked the younger boy up while motioning for Dean to follow him. Without a word, he left the small bar and headed out to the Impala to finally go back to the hotel room that they had been staying at for the past few days. Both of the boys passed out before they reached the parking lot. He didn't think it was from exhaustion from staying up so late the night before or from being out all day, but instead the angel that was standing in front of the car as soon as he had it in park and had killed the engine.

Castiel wasted no time in helping John extract the boys from the car while they continued to sleep. John had a feeling that the sudden random act of kindness from the angel was not born from kindness at all but instead done for the simple reason that if he hadn't then it would have taken the ex-marine another trip before they could talk in the safety of the hotel room. As soon as they were both inside the room with the doors closed and the boys down for the night Castiel began questioning him about what exactly happened while he was at Harvelle's Roadhouse. He explained everything to the angel, including the hunt he had agreed to accompany Bill on.

Castiel hadn't moved from his position at the window since they had closed and locked the door. He had only helped to guide the conversation so that he knew everything that happened at the hunter's bar when there was a lull in the conversation. It hadn't taken much prompting before the entire meeting had been recounted and now he was still standing by the window contemplating whether or not it was a wise idea to let John go on the hunt with Bill, train him beforehand, or get someone else to go with the two men. He knew of William H. Harvelle's reputation as being an exceptional hunter, but he didn't trust the man to keep John Winchester out of harm's way especially not with a case like the one the ex-marine had just described to him.

"Bring someone else." Castiel's tone was demanding, leaving no room for argument.

John stared at the figure before him with a mixture of confusion and disbelief. He had no idea why Castiel seemed so dead set on getting him to bring someone else into his plan to find out what had killed Mary or why he seemed to not believe Bill could handle himself on the field—unless the real reason for him not wanting to go with just Bill had nothing to do with the hunters experience and more with John's lack of experience, but that still didn't explain why he'd want to drag someone else into John's mess of a life.

"Who?" John snapped.

For the past few weeks he had been blindly following the angel because he thought the answers surrounding Mary's death would surface if he just did what Castiel wanted him to. He had thought that Castiel would bring him closer to finding the demon. All he had truly done was push John into a job title he didn't want. Bill knew nothing about the demon that had killed Mary and all of this was beginning to feel like a huge waste of his time.

Castiel's eyes narrowed ever so slightly as he tilted his head to the side in quiet contemplation, or maybe he was trying to figure out why John had become so upset by his earlier statement. Besides this small behavior he had given no sign that he was mad that John would question him or that he was in any way concerned about how John felt. John doubted that he actually was concerned, intrigued maybe, but not concerned. He had a feeling that Castiel didn't walk amongst humans very often. He didn't know very many humans that walked around with a permanent stick up their ass.

"Just do it." Castiel's tone was still calm and it infuriated John to think that no matter what he did he would get no other response out of the angel besides the calm tone and the occasional head tilt.

Before John could respond further Castiel vanished from the hotel room. John collapsed in the chair next to the table. He rested his elbows on his knees, entangled his hands in his hair, and pulled.

**January 6, 1984**

John had finally fallen asleep sometime around midnight that night. His eyes had slowly drifted shut until his chin dropped to rest on his chest while he was still seated in the chair next to the table by the door. At the time he had found it a convenient place to pass out since he didn't really want to get up just to collapse on the bed and fall asleep there. But now, at seven in the morning, after being awakened by a few consecutive loud bangs at the hotel door, he was having second thoughts. The muscles in the back of his neck were sore from the awkward position they were forced into the night before. His right hand came up to rub at his neck as he went to the door and opened it while sporting a glare for whoever felt the need to wake him up at such a time.

Brown eyes widened out of their glare into a look of surprise at the figure that was standing in the doorway. John had been expecting Bill to be on the other side to collect him for the hunt they were going to do that day. He hadn't expected to find Jacob, Mary's uncle, standing there with a determined and angry look on his face.

"What the hell happened?" Jacob growled as he shoved past John to enter the hotel room where the boys were still sleeping.

John lightly pushed the door shut in a half-assed attempt to stall for time until he knew how to broach the subject. It hadn't taken much thought to figure out what Jacob was referring to. He had been at the funeral and so he knew what happened to Mary. That only left what happened to Kate and him leaving town with Dean and Sam. He hadn't left a note or even called any of his relatives to let them know where he was going or when he'd be back so he wasn't quite sure how Jacob found him and by the looks of the fuming male figure standing in front of him he wasn't going to get an answer to that question any time soon.

"I don't know-"

"You don't know?" Jacob threw the words back at him, careful to keep his voice low as he added, "How the _fuck_ do you not _know_?"

"I wasn't there, at the time." John folded his arms across his chest and averted his gaze from the older male. He knew that Jacob wouldn't like the response so he wasn't exactly surprised when there was a flail of Jacob's arms and the growl he let out before he was turning away from John in what he assumed was an attempt at some self-control that kept him from reaching out to shake some sense back into him. Only, he was pretty sure by the look on Jacob's face when he finally turned back around to face him that the other man thought it was already too late for that.

Jacob fixes him with an accusatory stare that keeps John from looking directly at him. It's the look that he reads to say that Mary would not only be disappointed in but also pissed at him if she ever knew. But she wouldn't know; she was dead.

The idea to explain himself, or at least tell Jacob that it wasn't like he had left the boys there alone, died before they even reached his lips. It was a moot point. Mike had been at the shop, Kate had been killed, and he wasn't entirely sure how long Castiel had been there—not that he could really tell Jacob about the angel. Jacob would think he was insane if he mentioned he had been seeing angels. Angel. He had only seen the one angel since Mary's death. Was that still grounds to get him checked into an asylum?

Or maybe he was already there?

Kate had suggested he go to a therapist. Maybe he had and all this—the demons, angels, and people he has met over the past few days—wasn't even real. He had followed Castiel blindly. He accepted everything the angel said as fact, or at least with very little resistance, and now he was in some shitty motel with Jacob and his two sons. If seeing angels wasn't grounds for him to be locked up then following the angel's orders sure was.

And it was way too early for this kind of thinking.

John could feel a migraine coming on. Though he wasn't sure if it was from all of his thinking, caused by everything that had happened to his family and friends since November second, or the alcohol he had drank the day before. It was more than likely a combination of all of that rolled into one nice skull splitting migraine.

"Look, Jacob, I have to go." John turns around and begins to gather some things into a duffel bag for the boys to have while he's gone on the hunt with Bill.

"_Go_?" Jacob shouts, "Go _where_?"

"The Roadhouse." John says in explanation. A confused look appears on Mary's uncles face so he continues to talk, "The owner there, Bill, he says he can help me find wha… who killed Mary."

"I'm going with you." Jacob fixes him with another glare when he opens his mouth to try and protest. Together they get the car loaded with the bag and the two boys. The ride in Jacob's car to the bar is completely silent and when they get out of the car to drop Sam and Dean off with Ellen it doesn't get much better. Dean's stuck in a state of grumpy awareness and Sam refuses to cooperate when John tries to pick him up to take him inside. It takes longer then John would have liked, but they do finally get the boys inside the bar with the bag of supplies in hand. When they arrive at the bar it's past the meeting time—by more than just a few hours—so John isn't all that shocked when he doesn't see Bill standing in the parking lot waiting for him. He probably got tired of sitting out in the heat.

The place is basically empty again when they step inside. There's only a man with graying hair sitting at the bar and a baby girl playing in a play pin that hadn't been there the day before. John didn't remember Bill mentioning anything about a little girl but he forced himself to shift his focus when the man at the bar turned on the stool and gave them a cursory once over and forced a smile onto his face.

"They're in the back room so you can put the boys down in the pin there and we'll get going." The man says and when John doesn't make a move he lets out a sigh and grabs a piece of paper from the bar that John hadn't noticed a second ago.

"You don't believe me; then here." And with that he shoves the paper into Jacob's free hand.

Jacob's eyes dart back and forth along the page until he's read it. He shoves the note in front of John's face for him to see it's a note from Bill telling him to go ahead with Zachariah, the man standing in front of them, and to trust him because he's one hell of a hunter. John readjusted Sam in his arms so he had a better grip on him. He's still debating on whether or not that the note was genuine when Jacob takes Sam and the bag from his arms and leaves the boy in the pin with the bag on the outside.

"Let's go." Jacob all but growls out as he walks back over to John and snags him by the elbow of his left arm. He only spares this Zachariah guy a glance before he's pulling the ex-marine out the door without a second thought. He wanted nothing more than to get this over with, show John that go down this road would lead to nothing but madness, and then get them all back to Lawrence so they can get the entire Kate situation taken care of.

One long, silent, and awkward driver later and they were both climbing out of the car and join Zachariah in the graveyard that the papers in the folder Bill had given him the previous day had listed. John watches the new guy, Zachariah, carefully. He doesn't like the twisted smile that seems to be permanently painted onto his face as if he thought that that was the only reason that John and Jacob could trust him. He didn't trust the man even if Bill said he could; or wrote, he hadn't really said anything considering John hadn't even seen him that morning and Zachariah hadn't been brought up in their previous conversation.

"What are we looking for?" Jacob snapped.

"Uh… well," John thought back to the folder, "They don't actually know. Something has been attacking the people that come here for the past couple of weeks."

"So, what you're telling me is that you went to this Bill guy because he could help you, but the first thing he sends you on is some wild goose chase that really has nothing to do with Mary?" Jacob was glaring at John once again.

"You don't even know what we're hunting!" Jacob growled out before John could even say anything.

John stared at Jacob for what could have been mere seconds but for what felt like far longer. It was as though Mary's uncle knew far more about this then he was letting on. He made a mental note to ask him about it later, but for now they had far more pressing matters to attend to.

"Oh come now, boys." Zachariah interrupted in his overly cheery voice, "That's the thrill of the hunt."

Zachariah began to walk away and John started to follow him. He was stopped a few steps later by a hand wrapping around his upper arm. John turned his head so that he was facing Jacob. They both glared at each other and refused to speak first. John could wait Jacob out. He had learned how to be patient thanks to his days as a marine.

"Damn it, John!" Jacob dropped his voice this time to keep Zachariah from over hearing, "Mary doesn't want this-"

"Mary's dead." John hissed and tried to wrestle his arm out of Jacob's hold.

"She still wouldn't have wanted this." Jacob tightened his hold on John.

They continue their staring match for a few more minutes, Jacob trying to decide if bringing up the boys would do his argument any good and John simply being his stubborn self.

"Fine. But if we're doing this we're doing it right." Jacob drags John to the trunk of the car. He pulls out his keys, unlocks the trunk, and jerks the lid open. From the untrained eye there's nothing unordinary about the trunk of his car until he reaches inside, dips his hand into a small hole, and jerks the bottom up to reveal a hidden area with all kinds of weapons inside. John gapes at the entire display with a mixture of awe and shock. He doesn't really know what to make of this entire situation but before he can even try he's getting guns thrust into his arms and Jacob is loading himself down with a few as well.

"There are no real bullets in them. They're salt rounds." Jacob continues talking about what exactly the salt rounds do for hunters. He talks about ghosts, demons, and other things he's come into contact with since he started this. All John can do is to try and take in all of the information that's being thrown at him and make another mental note to ask Jacob about this entire thing later. He has to wonder if this is just a Jacob thing or if it's entire Campbell family thing. But that would mean Mary was hiding things from him and he didn't really want to think that Mary, the love of his life, knew about all of these things and didn't tell him about it. Not right now. He could think about it all later, when he wasn't having extra salt rounds shoved down his pants pockets.

Jacob turns back to the trunk, grabs a few more rounds, and then slams the door shut. A smile forms on his lips as he faces John once more, the first smile John has seen since Jacob stormed through the motel door. "You remember how to shoot, Corporal?" he asks.

John doesn't dignify the question with a response. He instead turns to the graveyard and begins to trail down the path that Zachariah had vanished down moments before.

It's late by the time they finally get past the gates to the graveyard—already a few hours past noon. John didn't know exactly what he was expecting, but to be the only three people in the graveyard definitely wasn't it. It was a place to mourn the dead, not put them underground and then completely forget about those that have already passed. Of course, he didn't know why he was so shocked. People had been killed. At least three in the past two weeks, more if you expanded the time frame.

Six hours pass with them walking around the place. Nothing's happened. In truth, they hadn't expected anything until night time. That's when the rest of the attacks had occurred. There really was no reason that they had come as early as they had.

John scans the area around him. Zachariah and Jacob had both ventured off to investigate other areas. Areas that were darker and further into the graveyard. Splitting up had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now it only made the graveyard appear eerily quiet. The only company for him was the sound of the earth crunching under his feet and the sound of his own breathing.

The quiet is disturbed as a shot rang out and John's feet are carrying in the direction he heard it before he even has a chance to think about it. Zachariah is running beside him sooner than he expected. He refuses to think about how that wasn't possible now because he can see Jacob ahead of him. And maybe he hasn't been a hunter long, not even a day, but he figures from everything Jacob and Bill have told him about everything that he should be seeing what's attacking Jacob, only he can't.

There's growling, the sound of flesh being torn away to reveal the muscles and bones underneath, and a screech of pain, but John can't see anything and that scares him only slightly less than it did when he found Mary on the ceiling. He doesn't hesitate. He stops in his steps, brings the gun up, and shoots at the—what, air?—thing hovering over Jacob and he hears a beast like yelp. He can see the grass being pressed down by giant dog like paws and Zachariah chases after the thing, best, whatever it is.

John glances after Zachariah and then drops his gaze to Jacob. He's trembling and cursing while staring down at his gaping chest wounds. He pulls off his shirt and presses it to the wound.

"Fuck!" Jacob hisses. He throws his head back and grinds his teeth from the pain. John only presses harder, trying to stop the blood flow to help Jacob until Zachariah got back and they could take him to the hospital.

"This. This is what I was talking about John." Jacob's wraps his around the back of John's neck and forces him forward, closer to him. "Hunters. They die. Mary wouldn't want this."

"You're not going to die Jacob." John grabs the hand still clutching his neck and brings it back down.

Jacob continues speaking as though John hadn't said a word, "You gotta promise me… Promise me you want turn the boys into orphans because you're chasing after Mary's ghost." Jacob's eyes roll to the back of his head and slip close.

John can hear a man approaching from his left. "We've gotta get him to a hospital." He says as he looks up to see Zachariah. The man doesn't look any less disheveled than he had sitting at the bar. He looks too calm and it only serves to make John angry.

"No use." Zachariah doesn't even sound out of breath.

John wants to stand up and punch him. He wants to do something to him because he doesn't seem to care that Jacob is bleeding out right in front of them. But he can't get up. He can't move. If he does, Jacob dies. Zachariah thrusts his hand in his pockets and stares down at Jacob like he was already a lost cause. And maybe he was, but that didn't give him the right to act the way he was.

"The thing we're after. It's a hell hound." His tone suggests that that should explain it all, but John doesn't know what that's supposed to tell him about why they can't take Jacob to the hospital to get him the help he needs. Zachariah lets out an annoyed breath before continuing, "It's only keeping him alive to prolong his suffering. You have to kill him." And that was said in the most relaxed and calm tone that John has ever heard. It makes the urge to hit Zachariah return.

"Come on," Zachariah steps over Jacob's body and bends down, "We should get him to the car."

Zachariah picks Jacob up off the ground. John remembers thinking that he doesn't look strong enough to be able to carry Jacob across the graveyard to get to the car, but the rest of it's a blur. Zachariah keeps talking about how they should kill him to keep him from suffering any more. John listens, but he doesn't really hear any of it. When he finally comes back to himself they're a mile down the road from the graveyard with both of the cars in front of them. Jacob's sitting in the driver's seat of his car, Zachariah's idea though John doesn't know why.

"You trust me, don't you?" Zachariah's smirking at him and speaking in a tone that was neither calming nor reassuring, but John found he couldn't deny that he did trust Zachariah. He had been right about everything so far. He knew that regular bullets wouldn't have worked on anything that normally haunted cemetery's, he knew that the thing was a hell hound, and he was able to tell John things about demons and other creatures that Bill hadn't. Jacob was the one that knew nothing about hunting, the one that had told them all to split up so that they could cover more ground, and had been one step away from giving him a gun with bullets that wouldn't have worked.

Zachariah's smirk morphed into a grin and he reached forward to cup John's face, "Now come on John; help me with this." John felt calm, calmer than he had in weeks. He wanted nothing more than to help Zachariah with whatever it was he needed. So when Zachariah turns to the car, braces himself on the back, and begins to push John goes along with it without a second thought. It's only until later, when they drive away in Zachariah's car and are in the Roadhouse parking lot that he realizes what he's done. He's more than a little thankful for the note on the door:

_The boy's are asleep John. So unless you wanna feel the wrath of a sleep deprived Ellen then I suggest you come back in the morning to get them. We'll talk then. –Bill_

John doesn't give the note a second thought. He climbs into the Impala and drives back to the motel. When he gets there he goes straight to the kitchen and pulls out a beer from the fridge. He digs in the cabinet until he finds a bottle opener and snaps it off before quickly chugging half of it down. The realization hit him once more, harder this time. Zachariah had pushed the car into the quarry with Jacob's still very much alive and breathing body in the driver's seat and he had done nothing to stop him. He had done nothing because he was too busy helping. John chugged the rest of the drink, pulled out another, and finished it off in the same fashion.

Zachariah stared at the quarry in front of him. He didn't know what possessed him to come back to this spot but he couldn't keep his eyes off the area where he knew a beat up car was sitting at the bottom with a man inside.

"Bill was supposed to hunt with him, Zachariah." He had been expecting that voice ever since he showed up at the Roadhouse that morning.

He spun around to face his brother. The serious never changing look he is currently receiving only makes him want to crack a smile and tell the little butt-muncher to lighten up. Their job doesn't always have to follow a strict plan as long as the end result is the same, but he has a feeling that the attempt at humor would only cause the inferior angel to cock his head to the side and stare blankly at him. And since he isn't up for seeing that at the moment he remains in his 'I'm-more-superior-than-thou' attitude that all the low level ass kissers like because Zachariah has found that they only ever enjoy taking orders and he dishes plenty out.

"Castiel." He gives a small click of his tongue in annoyance at having to explain himself, "He wouldn't have killed Jacob if I hadn't given him a little push. And as you know, one more death by his own hands brings Papa Winchester one step closer to becoming the hunter we know he can be."

"It also brings him one step closer to achieving our ultimate goal." Zachariah adds as an afterthought.

He should have realized that it would have happened no matter what he said. Castiel's head seems to be stuck in that confused head tilt that Zachariah honestly just wants to smack back into its upright position. He barely manages to refrain from doing just that. Instead he settles on a sigh before he folds his arms across his chest.

"You want that. Don't you, Castiel?" And immediately the inferior angel's attitude has changed.

Zachariah has also learned over the years that it is rather easy to manipulate his brothers and sisters. They all only ever need to know that what they are doing is exactly what their God wants and they turn to putty in his hands.

"And what about Bill?" Castiel is glaring at him now, "John will know something is wrong when Bill does not back up your story."

"It's already been taken care of." Zachariah waved off the question.

"Like the way you pushed John into killing Jacob?"

Zachariah folded his arms across his chest, a very human gesture, and glared at Castiel.

"You need to learn to relax, Castiel." He put on the forced smile he normally reserved for humans.

There was the sound of wings fluttering and a whoosh of air and then Castiel was left standing near the quarry by himself. Zachariah had more pressing matters to attend to than baby-sit the other angel and make sure he did his job correctly. One of his sisters had been eyeing the smelly vermin that walk the Earth with more interest over the past few months. He hadn't been all that worried until she fell off his radar.

**A/N 2**: _Alright so, I decided to cut this chapter short and only give two days. This is for a couple of reasons:_

_It was getting rather lengthy even with only two days_

_I haven't updated in a while and felt like you guys needed something_

_This seemed like a good a place as any to stop._

_Let me know what you thought of it! You'll I promise not to take as long this time to write the next chapter xD_


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